


Be My Last

by writergirl8



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Car Sex, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Phone Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-6a, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-22 23:45:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9630227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: It's simple. All Stiles has to do is not have sex with Lydia Martin, his gorgeous, intelligent, and powerful girlfriend, with whom he has been in love since he was eight-years-old, and who now suddenly, incredibly, loves him too.Simple. Really,reallysimple.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well holy shit. This baby kinda turned into a doozy. I am not amused. But also I love this fic, so I'm a little amused. 
> 
> This started off as an idea I had post 5b, thinking about Scott and Stiles in the library talking about dirty Lydia related stuff once Stiles and Lydia were together, and how that dynamic both would and wouldn't be weird for Scott. And then I kept thinking. And thinking. And thinking. And the idea for this fic was born. I'm gonna be honest, it was supposed to be a comedy, so I'm a little confused about how we got here, but here we are and I hope you're okay with it. 
> 
> Even though the concept, as a whole, was tremendously OOC then and is even _more_ OOC now, I couldn't get it out of my head. I know that the intensity of this relationship is so far beyond the storyline in this fic at this point, so I definitely wouldn't say that this is in my niche-verse, but it was still really fun to write. I also love considering the fact that Stiles and Lydia are just insecure teenagers who have been through so much. In many ways, they're just kids figuring themselves out and trying to understand how to be in an adult relationship, possibly with the person they end up with. So I suppose this is my homage to Stiles and Lydia being the teenagers that they never could be, even though it is canon compliant. 
> 
> Also, I spent way too much time on this fic so if you'd like to listen to the playlist that I listened to while I was writing this, [here you go](https://open.spotify.com/user/stydiacast/playlist/2flvJGQg4RRgzDnkpfUpg5)! I hope you like it as much as I do. Also, Lydia wears two fancy dresses in this fic,[here's](http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/lulus-plunging-v-neck-chiffon-gown/4403034?origin=category-personalizedsort&fashioncolor=NUDE) the first one and [here's](https://shop.guess.com/en/Catalog/View/women/dresses/view-all/mirage-ottoman-dress/W64K71Z13G2) the second one. This fic also has a gif-set created by Hollvndroden on tumblr (spoilers), a drawing by rememberiloveyou on tumblr (spoilers), and an aesthetic by Hollandroden on tumblr. The amazing place card is by songof-light on tumblr and I am so so into it. Guys, you're all crazy talented. Wtf. 
> 
> And I think that's all I have to say for now, except I cried while writing this so I deeply hope all of you cry reading it. It took me for-fucking-ever, so truly, I hope it brings you as much happiness as it brought me. Thank you so much for giving this fic a chance.
> 
> <3 Rachel

 

Sometimes Stiles zones out when Lydia is talking.

It's not like he can help it— it's not like he doesn't love hearing literally everything she has to say. It's just that she's so _pretty_ , with her hair floating down her back and the dimples that appear on her cheeks when she smiles and her eyes that seem to change color with every change of the sky. And her voice has always been this comfort for him, a security blanket, soft and sweet and full of warmth even when it isn't supposed to be.

He had told her one night, when they were on the phone at 3am, neither of them willing to hang up, that he loved her voice because it reminded him of when they were kids, and he would latch onto it in class, straining to pick up pieces of who she was.

But tonight, but _now,_ he knows so much more about her than he ever thought he would. He knows what it looks like when her shoes are off, her feet sinking into his bedroom carpet. He knows what it sounds like when she's laughing because the spot on her neck that he's kissing is ticklish, and how it feels when she presses against his chest to push him off of her so that she can flip them over and straddle him. And now he knows what it looks like when she's standing next to his kitchen sink, laughing at something his dad says as she wipes a towel around one of their dinner plates.

Which is such a wonderfully distracting image, he nearly misses her turning around and glaring at him to focus on what he's supposed to be doing.

"Ehem, Stilinski. If you're going to sit there looking pretty while we do the dishes, the _least_ you can do is stay alert enough to do your job."

Stiles jumps into action, snatching up a plate from where he sits on the kitchen counter and handing it off to his dad, who promptly dunks it in the sink and begins scrubbing.

"You can't say stuff like that to me, Lydia— it's my _fake_ _birthday_."

"Nonsense," she disagrees, shooting him a small smile over her shoulder. "I can say whatever I want to you, due to the fact that _I'm_ the one who brought the cake."

"What?" scoffs Stiles. "That's not a rule. Right, dad? That's not a rule?"

When the sheriff turns to Lydia, she smiles prettily at him, blinking twice to innocently flutter her eyelashes.

"I'm not arguing with that logic," he says gruffly, to the result of an annoyed groan from Stiles and a celebratory smirk from Lydia.

"Am I ever going to win a disagreement again?" asks Stiles as his dad hands Lydia another glass to wipe down.

"Nope," the two of them say simultaneously, and Stiles hides a grin in his hands.

"Anyways, buddy, I gotta go to work," says his dad, knocking Stiles on the knee with his fist. "Hope you had a good fake birthday, though."

"Yeah," he says happily. "It was great— thanks, dad. Thanks for the box-set. And the cake. And, you know, not making me do the dishes tonight."

"No problem, kid," says the sheriff before snatching his jacket up off of the kitchen chair on which it had been hung and heading out the door. "I'll be back at 7am. Don't forget to turn on the alarm."

"Will do," Stiles says, saluting as the front door swings open and shuts. "I hate that he has to do a night shift on my stupid birthday," he complains to Lydia as soon as it's closed. When he turns back towards her, he's startled to see how close she is, surveying him with interest in her expression as she moves to stand between his legs. Lydia stands on her tip-toes, pressing a small kiss against his lips, then slides her hand up his cheek. "We used to watch movies all night and build a blanket fort with Scott."

"You can build a blanket fort with me," suggests Lydia softly. "You can watch movies with me too, if you don't get too distracted," she adds cheekily.

"Who says I can't multi-task?" murmurs Stiles, eyes drooping lower as Lydia ducks in to kiss him again.

"Well, personally," she whispers, pulling back and toying with the hem of her shirt. "I'm glad that your dad has a night shift."

For some reason, Stiles suddenly can't stop smiling.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mhm. I think somehow I can make it up to you."

"Gimme a hint," suggests Stiles, hopping off of the counter. In response, Lydia grabs his hand and pulls him back towards his bedroom, where there's four things sitting on his bed that hadn't been there before— a bottle of champagne, Melissa's fudge frosting brownies, and two brightly wrapped presents with bows on them.

Oh.

Lydia got him birthday presents.

 _Oh_.

"I didn't get you a card," she says hurriedly, as if it's just occurring to her that she needs to blurt this out to him in order for him to understand. "I wasn't sure… I didn't know… anyways, I didn't get you a card, and, um."

She trails off when he grabs her hand and tugs her over to the bed, settling down on it with enthusiasm thumping through him.

"Don't care," he says abruptly. "It's perfect, Lydia."

"You haven't opened them yet."

He takes one of the bows off and smoothes some of her hair away from her forehead before sticking the bow onto her. Lydia rolls her eyes but leaves it on.

"Eh," he says quietly, before leaning forward and kissing her cheek, pressing the meaning of his words against her skin.

"You're very sweet," says Lydia, "but open it before I second guess myself and take it back."

"No!" he protests, snatching up the smaller of the presents. " _Mine_."

"Just so you know, it's not a gigantic stuffed giraffe," she says with a straight face. "I just wanted you to prepare for disappointment."

"Somehow I'll get over it," he says drily, fingers eagerly ripping at the paper. He throws it towards Lydia in his enthusiasm, hands moving quickly as he works to unravel the packaging. His girlfriend, in the meantime, sits tensely on his bed, her knees folded under her. She watches as his gaze lands on a simple box, following the movements of his hands carefully with her eyes. "Cufflinks, right?" teases Stiles, trying to put her at ease.

"Yes, how did you know?" Lydia deadpans.

He pulls up the top of the box and stares at the item inside of it. Picks it up. Turns it over. Reads the words etched onto the back.

"Lydia," he breathes out, feeling his stomach fill with flutters of emotion. "This is really expe—"

"You used to wear watches all the time," she interjects. "And you stopped, but I figured, what with our graduation coming up, it might be nice to have a watch again. A fancy one."

"You remember when I used to wear watches?"

Because that was so long ago, that was when Lydia was just the girl he had a crush on and Stiles was just the boy who thought he was good enough. He hadn't been, back then. He still isn't now. But she hadn't been her best either. They had made each other this. They had gotten each other here.

"I remember," replies Lydia simply, eyes flicking down to the watch. Stiles turns it over, reading the engraving on the back again.

_SS— Remember I love you. LM._

"I love it."

His voice is hushed as he slides the watch onto his wrist, feeling the weight of it pressing against his skin. It's too fancy to wear every day, but he likes the way Lydia smiles when she sees it wrapped around him. He places his hand on her neck and leans forward to kiss her, but Lydia jerks away, pushing him gently backwards with her hands.

"Nope. You have one more." She picks up the other box and hands it to him, small smile creeping across her lips. "And this one I _know_ you're going to like."

"Is it you?" he asks as he unwraps it. "Cuz I _like_ you."

"Stop kissing my ass. I already bought it for you; you don't have to earn it."

He tosses her a grin before finally ripping all of the paper off, revealing a Death Star waffle iron.

"Oh _fuck_ ," cheers Stiles, beaming. " _Shit_ , Lydia."

"Told you," she says smugly, but he interrupts her, lunging at her and beginning to kiss her for real this time. They lie back on his bed, Lydia's knees bracketing Stiles' hips as he slides his hands up her legs, feeling the smooth skin against the rough pads of his fingers.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he mumbles between kisses, hands finally leaving her thighs to slip up to her cheeks. He cradles her face, feeling like he wants to tell her how much this means to him, how he never thought Lydia Martin would know him well enough to get him presents that make him this happy, but he doesn't say that. Instead, he leans close like he's about to kiss her on the lips again, and waits until her eyes have fluttered shut before he places a delicate kiss on each lid.

"Stiles," she sighs, voice light. "Come back here."

"Mmm," he agrees, moving around to kiss her again, and this time it is with such a fervor that he doesn't quite know how he's going to get himself to stop. "Lydia?"

"Yes?"

He drifts down to her neck, biting gently on the skin there and sucking on it. She moans, rubbing herself against him, looking for some relief, and finally decides to pull off her shirt, tossing it to the floor of his bedroom. Stiles feels his stomach lifting as he slithers lower on the bed, kissing at her breasts before he moves down to mouth at one of her nipples over the lacy fabric of her bra. He hasn't seen this bra before. He thinks that might be on purpose.

Which… shit.

"Your birthday presents were amazing," he tells her, voice muffled by her skin.

"Thank you, I know," she replies cockily, head tossed back against the foot of his bed.

"I seriously can't imagine a better birthday gift from you."

Her hands are combing through his hair, tugging a little bit on the strands as she winds them around her fingers.

"Good."

"But it's not all I'm gonna ask for."

Lydia sits up on her elbows, looking beautifully wrecked with her plump lips and newly limp curls.

"Is that so?"

"I was wondering if I could get just one more thing from you."

"Depends on what you ask for," she informs him playfully.

"I want you to let me go down on you." The smile slides off of Lydia's face. She looks at him with the expression that reminds him of when she's trying to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle on Sunday mornings and she's just gotten to that _one_ question that always stumps her and makes her brood all day. "Happy birthday to me?" he sings halfheartedly.

"That is _so_ not where I thought that was going," says Lydia, point-blank, which makes Stiles laugh and duck his head into her chest, kissing the pale skin of her breasts again.

"You don't have to or anything, it's just… I've wanted to _forever_ , and—"

"It's _your_ birthday and you're asking to eat me out?" reiterates Lydia.

"Turns out cake just wasn't enough dessert for me tonight," he deadpans.

She stares at him for a moment, clearly knocked off balance, and Stiles places his hands on her stomach and settles his chin onto them, waiting patiently for her to make a decision. They haven't had sex yet, honestly haven't moved very far past light fondling and some very satisfying dry humping, but she's so pretty and she's _his_ and she loves him too and he thinks it's worth a try.

"Okay," Lydia says, cutting through his thoughts. "You can go down on me."

"Oh thank god," responds Stiles, letting out a relieved breath. "Cuz I don't know if you noticed, but that had the potential to be a real awkward situation. I mean, jesus, I almost wish I hadn't asked because I was sweating just waiting for you to answer, and—"

His words are halted by Lydia reaching down and pulling her panties out from underneath her skirt.

"Stiles," she says, sighing. "Now is absolutely not the time to be blabbering at me. Unless you know sign language, of course, in which case, go right ahead. But other than that… shut up."

"I notice you didn't say 'shut your mouth,'" he says cheekily, dropping further down on the bed until he settles between Lydia's thighs, doing everything he can to keep from both screaming and deeply inhaling in a way that he assumes she would find more creepy than hot.

"Well, that would be counterproductive."

"Ha, yeah," Stiles agrees. "Hey, wait, did you just say you know sign language?"

"Mhm," says Lydia lazily. "I learned when I was six, I actually taught myself, and of course it wasn't very diffic—"

She cuts off when Stiles lets out a long-suffering moan and presses his tongue flat against her pussy, dragging it from bottom to top, gathering as much of her on his tongue as he can get. She is salty and sweet, in a way that almost immediately becomes addictive to him, just because it's her. If he were a more patient person, Stiles would take the time to carefully look at the body in front of him. He would take in the wet folds which he is reverentially running his fingers over; he would take the time to press gentle kisses against the stretch marks that are painted across her inner thighs like lightening.

Instead, he licks at her like she's his second birthday cake and loses himself in the warmth of her pussy as he slides his fingers in and out, moaning right along with her. Lydia's thighs are soon shaking as he finds her clit and focuses on fluttering his tongue against it in different ways, finally finding one she likes when her grip tightens around his hair and she cries out needily.

He twists himself into a better position to bury himself inside of her, not caring about the way his bones scream in protest. He nudges his nose against her clit over and over again until he suddenly feels woozy, pulling up and resting his head on her thigh, kissing the top chastely.

"Is this… okay?" he asks, panting. When he finally brings his eyes up to meet Lydia's, she's staring at him with blown pupils and wide, serious eyes. She nods, unable to take her eyes off of him, but Stiles needs something else. He needs to hear her voice. He needs her to tell him. "Lydia, is this okay?"

"Yes," she says raspily. "Yes, _please_ , Stiles, I need—"

He doesn't say anything else, instead slipping effortlessly back down and hauling her legs over his shoulders before he begins eating her out again, trying the occasional scrape of teeth against her clit that has her bucking her hips up into his mouth.

She comes almost silently, except for the shaky breaths that she releases into the air. They float towards the ceiling, and Stiles peers upwards to see Lydia's eyes fixed on his ceiling fan as she bites down on her fist. He licks her clit until she stops shivering and winces instead, and then Stiles simply slips his tongue down to her opening, gathering the new wetness on his tongue. He means to stop, but as his tongue slides around her entrance, Lydia's hips jerk towards his mouth and begin shifting and twisting underneath him, as if she can't help it. Stiles smirks into her before placing a hand against her lower stomach, holding her in place while he licks eagerly at her entrance.

The breathy sounds begin to come back, and her hands are in his hair, pulling on it, and he can't help it. He begins rubbing his crotch against the bed, digging his hips into it, looking for any form of friction to get him through until he can jerk off or something.

It's a good plan, a solid plan, right up until he begins to groan into her folds and Lydia starts moaning in earnest, her voice high and desperate.

"Oh, god, Stiles… that's so… it's never… oh, mmm, you're gonna make me— I'm… I'm—"

She cries out, breathy and helpless, and the feeling of her smothering him with her body makes Stiles tip over the edge with her, riding out his orgasm in his jeans, moaning pathetically into her.

They lie there for a moment, silent, before Stiles places his chin on her thigh and looks up at her with a hopeful expression on his face.

"Uh… I…"

Lydia smiles at his inability to speak, stroking his hair out of his eyes.

"Was that… what you wanted?" she asks quietly.

He nods wordlessly.

"Yeah, I've always…" He stumbles over his words slightly, not sure what he really wants to say. "Yeah. It was."

"Good," she says, swallowing once before she breathes out slowly.

"Can you sleep here?"

" _Yes_ ," says Lydia. "But do you need to—?"

"Um, I'm okay, actually."

Her cheeks turn pink.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well… that's…"

"Efficient, I was thinking."

"Right, yes, efficient!"

They lie there uncertainly for a moment before Lydia sits up and slides off of the bed, arranging her skirt neatly around her legs as she gets up and walks towards the bathroom— to clean up, he would assume.

"Tomorrow morning," she says suddenly, turning around. "It's your turn, okay?"

"Oh, you don't have to—" Stiles begins, but Lydia cuts him off, shaking her head.

"It's still your birthday week," she reminds him. "So there might be another present or two."

(They sleep too long and too well and are almost late for school and there isn't any time for Lydia to suck him off. But when they walk into school hand in hand, Stiles can't actually bring himself to mind.)

* * *

By the time Stiles collapses into one of the familiar wooden chairs in the library, he's already given up hope on focusing at any point during the rest of the day.

He throws his backpack to the side, puts his arms on the table, and places his head in them, shielding himself from the bright morning light of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Moments later, he hears Scott chuckle quietly as he settles into the seat next to Stiles.

"School is the worst, did you know that?" asks Stiles rhetorically, thinking of the pile of makeup assignments he is still working through. Mostly, he doesn't even know why he's bothering anymore. He's already been accepted to George Washington. Who even cares.

"I like school," Scott says contently. "I didn't used to, but I guess as we get older—"

"Ugh," Stiles complains. "Don't say 'I start to appreciate the smaller things.'"

"How about I start to appreciate the 'not being dead' things?"

"How about 'that's basically the same thing'... things?"

"Smooth."

"Gimme a break, I'm tired."

"Long night?"

The knowing note to Scott's voice almost makes Stiles want to give his best friend a nuggie, but the truth is, Scott could avoid those even before he was a supernatural creature with supernatural strength and supernatural reflexes. So, with that in mind, he settles on raising his head slowly from his arms and squinting at Scott in a way that he truly hopes conveys the mock annoyance that is running through his veins.

"I don't like the tone you're taking," he says flatly, which just makes Scott laugh again. "Yeah, well, I stayed at Lydia's last night and she had this crazy-ass dream at three o'clock in the morning so." His tone is casual, but only because the extent of how terrifying Lydia's nightmares can be sometimes isn't something he wants to relay to Scott.

Scott worries about them too much already.

"Is she okay?" he asks.

"Yeah," Stiles says, like it's a given, and then he realizes that it _is._ It is because he was there. He had held her and she'd taken his face in her hands, running her fingers across his skin, down the slope of his nose, around his ears, finally landing on the warm pulse beating under his neck.

She is always gentle when she touches him. Stiles is almost convinced that Lydia thinks that he is the crystal one in this relationship. Which would make sense, because of the two of them, he is most certainly the one more likely to crack. But he has never been nearly that valuable.

"You guys have been sleeping over at each other's houses a lot lately, haven't you?" observes Scott casually.

Stiles finally gets the energy to straighten-up, reaching to the floor and snatching up his backpack. He unzips the front pocket, pulls out a pen, and scratches his nose with it as he says, "Uh. I guess."

The math worksheet in front of him makes him cringe with exasperation. He already knows how to do the goddamn formula— why does he have to sit down and solve it eight million times? God, teachers are so fucking dumb.

"You know, I'm really impressed with you, dude," Scott is saying, shaking his head admiringly. "I always kinda thought you'd be freaked out about having sex with Lydia for the first time, cuz, you know. It's such a big deal, you've liked her for such a long time, and also because, you know, it obviously doesn't matter to her because she loves you, but she has way more experience than you do."

Stiles blinks.

"Uh. Scott?"

"I mean, she's had sex with the captain of the lacrosse team. And a werewolf! And, you know, probably other people that we don't know about. So I'm just really impressed that you handled it this well. You grew up, bro."

He punches Stiles on the shoulder happily, not noticing, at first, that his best friend has paled considerably.

"Uh, Scott?" he repeats.

"Yeah?" Scott says, still smiling. His dimples are ridiculous.

"We haven't had sex yet."

"...oh shit."

"Yeahhhh."

He drags it out, wondering how much time he should give Scott before he completely panics.

"Stiles, don't—"

"Oh god," Stiles groans, knocking his head right back onto the table and placing his hands in his hair, tugging on the strands. "Fuck, I was so busy thinking about when I was going to get into her pants that I didn't consider how well I'd do when I was in them."

"Stiles, you're being crazy. Lydia's been wearing way more skirts lately."

He crumples his math homework into a ball and throws it at Scott for attempting to make a joke when Stiles has just realized that he is already a complete failure who can't get his girlfriend off before he has even had a chance to get his girlfriend off.

"I've only had sex with _one person_. Lydia probably knows so much more about it than I do… oh my g— wait, what if she wants to try weird shit that I don't even know about? Am I gonna look like a complete idiot in front of her?"

"You've been watching porn since you were _twelve_."

"Okay, but it's not like I have a giant were-penis."

"Becoming a werewolf doesn't make your dick bigger, Stiles."

"How would _you_ know?"

"Because… maybe because I am one?"

"Once is an incident, two's a coincidence, thr—"

"Okay, okay," Scott says, throwing his hands up. "Then we can go ask Liam if his got bigger when I bit him."

"Good call," Stiles replies, nodding determinedly as he pushes up from the table. Scott sighs and tugs him back down into his chair, using very little strength to do so.

"Dude. I was joking."

"You know what's not a joke? Jackson's dick. Which we all used to see in the locker room."

"You _looked_? Stiles, you're not supposed to look!"

"Like I wasn't going to watch people change in the locker room. Grow up, Scott."

"Well… what about other stuff?"

"Asses? Yeah, I look at asses too."

"No, I mean, like… foreplay. You're good at getting her off, right? It doesn't matter how big your dick is as long as, you know; you can get her there eventually."

"I…" He trails off. "I don't actually know. We haven't really gotten past… I mean, there was this one time, my birthday, but we haven't since, and… I think it went good? But, god, maybe not. Oh my god. What if I totally fucked up? Scott, what the fuck?"

"Um?"

"I mean, we've, like, gotten off together, but it's been dry humping almost every time? We just… we wanted a chance to figure ourselves out as a couple before we added other shit to it. And my last relationship started with the sex and all the other crap came after that, and then it wasn't _enough_ , it fell apart. I don't want that to happen again. I didn't want to be something Lydia regretted."

Scott stares at him for a moment. Then he smiles proudly.

"That's actually… really thoughtful."

"Lydia Martin," says Stiles distractedly. "The girl who I spent so many years pining after, I forgot to figure out what I was going to do with her when I had her."

"Like you didn't spend every night thinking abou—"

"I meant _practicing,_ jesus, Scott."

"The buzzcut didn't do you any favors," Scott adds helpfully.

"Yeah, thanks, man."

"You're being crazy!" Scott says, punching Stiles in the arm. He's so frustrated that it almost comes out as a growl. "Lydia loves you, man. That's literally all that matters. The rest of it, you two can figure out. I mean, Allison wasn't a virgin when we slept together, but we got the hang of it together. It's what you do when you love someone."

 _What if she stops loving me_? Stiles thinks to himself, heart sinking a little in his chest. Because, despite all the affirmations, Stiles is certain that a part of him will always think that it would be simple, easy, _effortless_ for Lydia to not love him anymore. If Lydia is the sun, he is a blade of grass. And the sun may warm the blade in the morning, but at the end of the day, it still vanishes into the horizon, leaving the grass dewy and cold.

"We just started going out," he says instead of all that. "It's not like… it's not like—"

"Don't," warns Scott. "C'mon, don't do that to yourself." It's a mark of how well his best friend knows him that Stiles hadn't even needed to finish the sentence. "You didn't see what she was like when you were gone. She loved you even when she didn't know you existed. That's not the kind of thing that you feel when you've 'just started going out.'"

Stiles ignores him because it's easier to think about what he knows: Lydia had loved him when he was gone. She had saved him by loving him— she had brought him back to her, just like he had brought her back to him.

And all of that had happened without sex involved in any capacity. All of that happened before there was even a chance of it.

"Here's the plan," he says, slapping his palms against the table.

"Oh no." Scott has a look on his face that seems to reflect 'dread.' Stiles would assume that what he dreads is being less brilliant than his best friend but, whatever. Scott's the pretty one, Stiles gets to be smart. "Stiles, are you sure you want to go there?"

"The plan is that I am not going to have sex with Lydia."

"And you went there."

"If there's no sex stuff going on, there's no problem."

"Dude. You can't just stop the natural progression of your relationship. If Lydia wants to—"

"Wrong!" says Stiles. "I can do whatever I want. It's _my_ relationship. Not yours."

"So, what, exactly?" Scott questions, exasperated again. "You're just going to push Lydia back until she freaks out and thinks you're not attracted to her or something and starts to panic and retreat back into her whole thing where she hates being vulnerable to people, including you? Her boyfriend? Who she is supposed to trust?"

"Nah. That's not gonna happen."

"Okay, what do _you_ see happening?"

Stiles pauses.

"Um, I haven't thought that far, but I know it's not going to be that." Scott glances out the window like he is highly considering making a run for it. "Lydia won't even notice!" The scoff that Scott releases is actually audible. Stiles almost wants to call him out for it, but he decides to be the bigger person, snatching up his crumpled math homework from the table and delicately smoothing it out. "Come on, Scott, you'll see. I always have the best plans, remember?"

* * *

"Stiles, it is scientifically impossible that certain m&m colors taste better than the other ones."

The fondness and righteous indignation that Lydia's voice holds is almost enough to make Stiles concede to her, but he'd rather hear it again. And again. And again.

God, he _stupid_ loves her.

"Nope," he disagrees seriously. "The brown ones and red ones taste better than all of the other ones."

"But there's absolutely no reason why that would be scientifically acc—"

"Yet taste buds do not lie," he points out, flicking on his turn signal to pull into the driveway of her house. "I can't believe you don't trust my taste buds after all this time, Lydia. Remember the brownies incident of 2012?"

"You were the _only_ one stupid enough to try those. Malia literally admitted that she didn't remember if she used salt or sugar."

"Aha, but I said they were gross, didn't I? So therefore, I was _right_."

"You're just arguing to argue," Lydia says flatly, unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping out of the jeep. "And if you think arguing is going to get you out of working on this English project, you are so _incredibly_ incorrect."

Stiles follows, grumbling only slightly as he follows Lydia into her house, more annoyed about doing homework than anything else. But, really, any excuse to hang out with her is good enough for him, so it's not like he's going to sit here complaining as Lydia sits on the floor in front of her coffee table and begins piling papers onto it.

"I don't know why we're bothering with homework," Stiles says, yawning as he plops onto the floor across from Lydia. "We already got into college. Let's take a nap instead."

When he looks over at Lydia, he can tell that she's actively considering this proposal until she shakes herself out of it and gives him a stern glare.

"Colleges have been known to rescind their offers due to a rapid decline of grades. Now are you writing your report on Much Ado About Nothing or The Tempest?"

"Which one has more dick jokes?"

"For a Shakespeare play, The Tempest is actually light on them."

"So… Much Ado."

She fights back a smile as she grabs her book from her bag, setting it on the table with its brightly colored sticky notes containing carefully written comments.

"Did you see Prada when you came in?" Lydia asks as she leafs through the pages.

"Uh, no," Stiles replies, eyes sweeping around the living room. "And, actually, it's a little weird that he hasn't attacked me yet."

"Maybe he's starting to like you," Lydia suggests.

"Nah, that's not it."

She's in the middle of laughing when something sparks in her eye.

"Wait."

"What?"

"My mom took him to the groomer."

"So?"

"The groomer that's three towns over, because it's next to the salon that she likes."

"Okay?"

"So she's getting her hair and nails done."

"Which means she'll be gone for a couple of hours at least, right?"

"Oh, at _least_."

They stare at each other for a few seconds before Lydia snaps her book shut, crawling around the coffee table to where Stiles is sitting with his back against the couch. She straddles him, leaning down to press her lips against his. It's teasing and a little chaste, so he opens his mouth almost insolently, not letting her waste any time. He feels Lydia laugh through her nose as her tongue tags his, then darts away, making him chase her. The small smile on her lips fades into a moan as he sweeps his tongue over hers intently, and her hands shake a little as she strokes his cheeks. He wants to tell her he loves her, but instead he slides his teeth over her bottom lip, leaning forward to chase her, get her closer. His hands cup her ass underneath her skirt, and Lydia lets out a long, luxurious sigh as she places her hands over his and slides them up her hips, her waist, until they're covering her breasts.

He thumbs over her nipples where they are pressing hard against the cups of her bra and Lydia opens her mouth wider in response, tilting her head and letting her tongue sweep over his teeth, moving a hand from his shoulder to his chest, scraping her nails lightly. It drives him crazy to feel the sharpness of them against him underneath his t-shirt, and he subconsciously squeezes her breasts a bit harder, making Lydia gasp into his mouth. She pulls back for a moment, slipping out of her shirt before moving her mouth back to his and dropping another kiss onto it.

"Stiles," she murmurs, lips nudging into his. He breathes in and out loudly before covering her mouth with his again, unable to keep himself from drifting down to her chin and begin leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses on the front of her neck, feeling her throat work beneath his lips. He drifts down to her sternum before kissing his way back up to her clavicle and then licking the rest of the way to her earlobe, nipping at it and tugging it into his mouth.

She pulls him on top of her, settling him between her legs as she snakes her hands underneath his shirt, feeling her way up his stomach.

" _Fuck_ ," he whispers fervently, letting her take the rest of the shirt off before she cants her hips up towards his, dragging her lower body against him. He noses down her cheek, catching his breath while Lydia braces herself on her elbows, panting, and watches him carefully with her eyes. Stiles slowly drags his lips across her cheek until they finally land back on her lips, latching onto the upper one and pulling it into his mouth before he lazily runs his tongue underneath it.

His hands move on their own volition, sliding down from her breasts to her skirt, toying with the edge of her panties.

"Stiles, take them off," Lydia mumbles, eyes sweeping over his face. " _Please_."

He wants to.

He wants to so bad.

But, oh fuck. He can't.

"Uh, I think my dad's calling," he says, pushing up from the floor and digging his silent phone out of his pocket. "Oh, right, he wanted my help with something at the station."

Lydia frowns, still perched on her elbows, staring at him from the floor. She's startled, her legs still parted where he'd been lying between them, and her hair is mussed up in the back. She looks so pretty that he wants to crawl right back onto the floor with her and start kissing her again, but instead he shoves his phone back into his pocket and tightens his hands into fists.

"Did something supernatural happen?" Lydia questions, confused.

"Uh, yes. No! Don't worry! Maybe. I gotta go, I'll write some of the essay tonight, bye, love ya, see you later!"

He has to jerk off in the shower when he goes home, which seriously sucks, but not as bad as the feeling of guilt that permeates his stomach for the rest of the night.

* * *

"What are you eating?"

The disgruntled sound of Malia's voice causes Stiles to glance down at his sandwich in confusion, trying to figure out what could be so offensive about it. When he swings around to defend his peanut butter and fluff, he realizes that she's actually glaring at Mason.

"It's a ham sandwich," Mason says, taking a bite and showing her the ham.

"You put a _pickle_ in it," points out Malia, as if he doesn't know.

"It tastes good," he replies, shrugging unapologetically. "I like it."

Malia frowns, her whole mouth turning down as she pulls apart her pastrami sandwich.

"People are weird," she says, probably talking to the bread, Stiles would assume, because she is making eye contact with nobody.

"Your favorite food is deer," scoffs Hayden. Next to Stiles, Lydia rolls her eyes.

"Can we please focus on the real issue here?" she asks. The pack is gathered outside at their favorite picnic table, speaking quietly so as to not attract the attention of their peers. "You were saying, Scott?"

He clears his throat, checking his phone with a frown tugging at his eyebrows.

"Well," Scott begins, "The sirens are still killing people. With their voices."

"And?" asks Hayden.

"Is that not bad enough for you?" Stiles says, turning to her with an annoyed grimace on his face.

"I think her question is whether or not we have a plan," interjects Mason, always the pacifier.

"I would personally like to know how many people they've taken so far and how long they've been in Beacon Hills," says Lydia, directing her gaze back towards Scott. "Did Deaton tell you?"

"Four, so far," he says, eyes dimming as they settle on the table, unable to look at them. Stiles watches as Lydia reaches across the table and wordlessly covers Scott's hand with hers, as if she's trying to tell him that it's not his fault. "Which is why we _need_ to start doing something. I mean, really doing something."

"What can we do?" asks Liam. "It's not like we can stop people from going out with boats or going into the water."

"So we go directly to the source," says Mason. "We talk to the sirens."

"Can you guys track them with scent?" Lydia inquires hopefully, eyes darting around to all of the werewolves.

"That depends," Malia says. "How fishy do they smell? Do they smell like normal fish, or fishier? Or _less_ fishy?"

There's a pause during which nobody quite knows how to answer the question.

"All good points," Scott responds eventually.

"I wonder if Deaton might have some samples at your office that would help?" Stiles says to Scott, his fingers tapping against the table antsily. He hates this so much. He hates that there's _another_ thing that could take him away from the people he loves. He doesn't care anymore; it doesn't matter. He's not going without the biggest fight of his life. He's not leaving her. He's not leaving _any_ of them.

"Yeah, I can check!" Scott says, hopeful. "And I can text Kira and ask her if the skinwalkers know anything about the mythology."

"In the meantime, how exactly would we communicate with the sirens if we did find them?" asks Liam. "I mean, wouldn't we get taken if we got near them?"

"Only if you were attracted to women," Lydia reasons.

"I can go," interjects Mason.

"One more?" says Scott, looking around.

"I can't," Malia says, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, me neither," agrees Stiles.

"I'll go," Corey interjects. All of them look at him in surprise. "What? I'm not attracted to women."

"You're also not usually so attracted to doing anything that's not for yourself," Stiles reminds him, lids fluttering suspiciously.

"Mason's going, so I will too," replies Corey, meeting his gaze with a stubborn glare of his own.

"Fantastic," Lydia says, placing her hand on Stiles' knee as he jerks forward, intending to bite again. "It's settled, then."

"I'll check out Deaton's samples after school," Scott says, grabbing his backpack and tugging his math homework out of it. "In the meantime, let's try to make sure there's no more deaths, okay?"

Everybody agrees, even though they all know that they don't know what they're agreeing to. But sometimes that's just the way it works when you're in Scott's pack. Sometimes, trying is good enough because it has to be. The more you fail, the closer you are to a success.

And Stiles knows that Scott gets that better than anyone.

* * *

Stiles' books are on the floor again.

It's not his fault that lockers are never fucking big enough, okay, and his backpack is probably going to get a hole in it from how many textbooks he's been carrying around since he got back from the wild hunt, hoping that he would be able to catch up fast enough to graduate. He's going to do it, but not without a fight, and as a result, he's been studying harder than he had throughout the entirety of high school _combined_.

Which is a pretty damn good excuse for why he hasn't really had much time to spend with Lydia lately, to be honest, if you're not counting the whole siren thing, which he does. The pack has been going crazy trying to figure out how to get those assholes the hell out of Beacon Hills so that they can focus on the genuinely important things, like prom and college and video games.

But today is relatively calm, which is why Stiles is able to take a healthy dose of adderall, attend each and every one of his classes, and actually try to pay attention. Something that is never, ever easy when you're late because your books fall all over the floor during class change and there's papers everywhere.

He swears loudly, diving to the floor to pick the books up, and that's when a pair of maroon high heels lands in front of him. Stiles' eyes follow the path of her strong legs up to the hem her dress, then skid higher up to the amused expression on her face as she watches him trying to clean up his books.

"Need some help, cowboy?"

Lydia swoops to the floor with him, gracefully gathering his books up and stacking them in her arms before she straightens and places them neatly in his locker.

"Thanks," he says, heart fluttering a little bit, just because he can't really help it. She still kinda knocks him off balance sometimes.

He kisses her cheek when he stands, then finally manages to tuck his books neatly into his backpack, zipping it shut with a grunt of effort. When his eyes shift back to Lydia's face, he sees her eyes traveling appreciatively up his body before they finally wind up back on his, a cheeky smile on her lips.

"I was thinking that you could come over tonight," she says lowly.

"You're gonna help me study?"

Lydia just shakes her head.

"Absolutely not," she whispers, stepping closer and bunching his shirt into her fist before she kisses him. "It's been way too long and I _miss_ you."

"I'm right here," he says, trying to make a joke about it as he lifts his shoulders and smiles too toothily, his thumbs pointed towards himself.

Lydia's eyes slide up to the ceiling as she considers this. Then she looks back at Stiles, mashing her lips together before she speaks.

"Fine," she says shortly, voice playful. "I don't miss you, I miss your fingers." She nods. Her eyes latch onto his hands for a moment before she drags them back up to his face. "And I expect you to bring them to my house at six o'clock."

She's already turned around and begun walking away by the time Stiles gets his brain unscrambled.

"Lydia!" he says, calling after her. She turns around, exasperated.

"What?"

"I _really_ have to study. Rain check?"

Her heels clack as she takes a few steps closer, eyes scrutinizing his face carefully. Eventually, she deflates, tilting her head to the side.

"You're really _that_ intent on graduating with us?" she jokes, voice a little weak. Stiles' answering smile is pained as he notes the confusion in her expression. He tells himself that he doesn't see insecurity there too, because he can't. It's _Lydia_.

"Ha. Yeah."

"Okay." She squeezes his hand. Kisses him on the cheek. Doesn't look away from his eyes when she speaks to him, as though she can't get enough of the way they're always, always, always trained on her face. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, then. Don't be late."

God. He really is a dick.

* * *

"Never tell anybody I said this but—" Stiles scrubs his hand up and down his cheek, yawning widely. "I can't do research anymore."

From her perch at his desk chair, seated in front of his laptop, Lydia makes a soft 'tsk' noise, her fingers still moving rapidly over the keys.

"Good thing I'm the only one here who's doing any research."

"What are you talking about? I'm _preparing_."

"You're wrapping red yarn around tacs."

Stiles glances down at the pile of yarn that is in his hands, half of the red strings attached to the pins that he puts on his corkboard.

"Well, someone has to do it," he says defensively.

"Or we could try using the green yarn."

"When is there ever any green yarn?" asks Stiles rhetorically, tying off another piece of yarn. "Anyways, did you find anything about how we could bribe them yet? Or why they're here in the first place?"

"Usually they isolate themselves to small islands," Lydia says, squinting at her laptop. Stiles accidentally drops his yarn as he watches her face glow prettily by light of his laptop. It's only been a week since he decided to… well, not make an idiot of himself, he'd call it. That's what he's calling it. It's been a week since he decided to not make an idiot of himself, and he's almost startled by how much how misses touching her.

It's not like they never touch anymore, it's just that he's been continuously throwing them into activities that don't involve making out, just so he won't be tempted to go further. Lydia seems to like kissing him, but that's not what he's worried about. He's worried about what it means when she drags her eyes from his toes to his head, tilting her head to the side and biting lightly on her lip as she stares at him across the hallway, because he's barely keeping it together as it is, and knowing that Lydia Martin gets turned on by him makes it even harder.

They'd had a movie marathon the other day, and Stiles had been so panicked about how good she smelled and how well he could remember making her come on his tongue on the night of his birthday, he'd ended up calling Scott and asking him to come over to monitor them. The confusion on Lydia's face when Scott had walked in, bearing more popcorn, had almost made Stiles regret his decision, but she had ended up scooching over to create a place for Scott on the couch, and that was that.

But yeah. He misses her. It just is what it is.

It's not like he can't remember why he was doing this in the first place, but the more days that pass, the more stupid he thinks it is. Okay, so, yeah, he'd been freaking out. But it's not like Lydia's never been freaked out about anything. She's human too. People fuck up.

But, god, how do you go back when you fuck up _fucking_?

"Are they, uh, still cannibals?" asks Stiles, searching for anything to say.

Lydia's brow creases as she looks up from the laptop.

"As far as I know."

"Cool," he replies simply.

"All research indicates that they're just… manic. There's probably no motive for them to be here, they just… do this."

Fear settles into his bones faster than he would have thought possible. Stiles feels something icy running through him, making him want to freeze himself off from this moment; freeze himself off from his feelings the way he had been before Lydia burned him back to life. He stops himself from doing that, choosing instead to focus on the way she stretches her fingers over the keyboard while she considers what to look for next.

"Like the ghostriders," Stiles says, cutting through the silence. "No motive like the ghostriders didn't have a motive."

She's up from the desk even as he starts to turn away from her, not wanting to her to see his face like this. But Lydia winds her arms around him from behind, pressing her forehead between his shoulder blades and letting him feel the way her chest rises and falls against his back.

"Stiles," she says quietly, "I will never let them take you." He doesn't say anything because it isn't in her control. "Do you hear me? My voice is even more powerful than theirs, and I will use it to keep you. I'm not letting them take you. Not _ever_. I will use every single power I have to keep you safe."

He breathes out slowly, turning around to look at her. Lydia is blinking back tears as she stares up at him, and suddenly Stiles can't fathom why he had done this to her.

"Shit," he says, swiping a thumb across her cheek, wiping at a tear. "You were so good at not liking me. What the hell happened?"

Lydia laughs, a little watery. She catches his wrist and presses a kiss against it, eyes still on his face.

"I slipped."

He cups her chin in his hands and gently brings her mouth up to meet his and kisses her, slow and tender. Lydia _melts_ against him; she physically uses his shoulders to anchor herself up as she kisses back, lost in him, just for the moment. He can sense the way she isn't thinking at all right now, too overcome with everything that they are. And he wants that for her. He wants to give that to her as much as humanly possible, for the rest of his life.

"You're gonna get _sick_ of me," he promises her, backing them up to the bed. He sits, and Lydia settles into his lap, not seeming to be willing to let go of him quite yet. "You're gonna be trying to get rid of me pretty soon, Lydia Martin."

He doesn't mean for his voice to catch the way it does. He _doesn't_ , okay? He'd been trying to make a joke, but… well. Sometimes he says stuff and it isn't as funny as it should be.

"Let me show you how not possible that is," she murmurs, pushing him backwards so that he's lying on his bed. She slides down with him and begins kissing him. He can sense the difference immediately— usually, when Lydia kisses him, it's fast and furtive and a little bit frenzied, even with all the carefully executed skill. But she's not kissing him like that right now. She's kissing him slow, and tender, and gentle. She's kissing him like he kisses her.

This time it's his turn to melt. 'Cause, okay, it hadn't really occurred to him that she'd be able to _learn_ something from being with him, but here she is, kissing him like they have all the time in the world, just to prove a point, and suddenly Stiles thinks that Lydia might be proving an entirely different point, one that she doesn't even know needs to be made.

And, yeah. He hears her. He pays attention. Just like he always has.

* * *

"What exactly are you doing to your popcorn?" comes a judgemental voice. Stiles looks up from the large popcorn bin that he has placed on the counter, a few straws falling out of his mouth as he goes to answer her.

"Putting chocolate and gummies in it," he says, adding an " _obviously_ ," at the end just so he can see her mouth split into a smile. Lydia peers into the popcorn bucket, the corners of her mouth turning down as she stares at the intermingling gummies and chocolate.

"This is disgusting," she tells him with the utmost of sincerity in her voice. "Truly. I cannot believe I let you put your tongue in my mouth."

"On the daily," he reminds her cheekily, and Lydia sneaks a falsely exasperated grin in his direction before she finally gives in and bumps the fist he offers her.

He tucks the bucket under his arms and snatches her hand up in his, swinging their arms between the two of them as he begins pulling her towards the back of the movie theater.

"I can't have this stuff in the house because my dad finds it and eats it, so me and Scott used to come here every Tuesday because it was half-off, and we'd overload ourselves on junk food and watch two movies in a row."

"You were _very_ busy before we met, weren't you?" teases Lydia, and he rolls his eyes as he brings their hands to his mouth and kisses her wrist.

"Oh yeah. All day, every day."

The theater is dark, overly air conditioned, and smells obnoxiously of buttery popcorn as Stiles holds the door open for Lydia and guides her through it, his hand on the small of her back.

"Where do you want to sit?" she asks, looking up at him, but he just shrugs, feeling particularly easy going because of the way her thumb is stroking his skin.

"Anywhere's good."

She gives him a sly smile before she drags him all the way to the empty back row, tucking the two of them in the corner.

It's a big screen, so there isn't really a bad place to sit, but he still finds it to be a little odd that Lydia doesn't want to be front and center for the movie version of The Great Gatsby that she has been talking about nonstop for the last week. As the lights go down, she hunkers deeper into her seat, leans all the way forward on her elbow rest, and moves very close to him, her lips brushing against his ear as she speaks.

"Can I try some of your infamous popcorn?" she asks. He nods, Adam's apple bobbing as he holds the bucket out to her. Lydia takes a piece of popcorn, some gummies, and an m&m, popping them into her mouth and sighing a little at the taste. Then she sticks her finger in her mouth, sucking the salt and sweetness off of it. "Thanks," whispers Lydia, lips tugging lightly on his earlobe as she pulls away.

He's starting to think that maybe the movie was a bad idea, but then Lydia is settling back into her seat and popping some of her raisinettes into her mouth. The movie is starting and Stiles gets to watch Leonardo DiCaprio obsess over Daisy Buchanan in a way that, frankly, makes him slightly uncomfortable, but whatever. It starts to not matter when Lydia keeps squeezing closer to him, her breasts brushing against his arm as she reaches for some of his popcorn, her head on his shoulder when she's just watching.

Eventually, she gets listless, dropping a few test kisses against his shoulder before her mouth moves up to his neck. She litters kisses across his moles, then bites lightly down on a piece of skin, sucking it repeatedly until he can imagine that she's created a pretty decent sized hickey. Between Lydia's tongue soothing over the spot and her breasts pressed against his arm, it's pretty damn unbearable when he starts getting hard, especially when her hand slides up his leg, over to the tent that has formed in his jeans.

"Lydia," he whispers as she begins lightly stroking his cock over his pants. "Lyds, you've wanted to see this movie forever. What are you doing?"

She takes her hand off of his dick long enough to turn his cheek towards her, the movie flashing different colors across her face as she smirks at him.

"I _have_ been wanting to see it forever," she admits. "In fact, I wanted to see it so badly, I went to see it with my mother last Saturday." Oh. "Now," she whispers, tongue ducking playfully around the shell of his ear before dipping briefly inside. "We know you're good with your mouth, but how good are you at staying quiet?"

His breath comes out in low stutters as Lydia carefully unzips his red jeans under the cover of the loud jazz music that plays on the screen. He's wearing boxers today, and he sees her cheeks dimple when she realizes that all she has to do is unsnap the front flap. She does it quickly, when there's shouting on screen, and her lips are pressed against his cheek when her warm hand wraps around his aching cock for the first time.

She jerks him off slowly, tantalizingly, as if she wants to see how many times she can pull him to the edge and push him back. At first it's too light, and he thinks that he can get through it because he is used to holding himself much tighter. But then she grips his chin and turns him to look at her as her hand clenches, watching the reaction in his eyes. She finally gets it _just_ right, and he wants to drop to his knees and thank every religious deity that he can think of. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans his head back against the chair, concentrating on keeping his mouth shut so that he doesn't make any noise.

It feels like she's testing him in the most maddening way, and all Stiles can do is curl his hands into his fists on his upper thighs and wait for her to finally let him come. She's watching his face very carefully, he notices, and sometimes her right hand comes up to touch his cheeks while the left one continues to jerk him.

"Come on, Stiles," she murmurs in his ear. "Come for me. Come on."

His thighs tighten, and then she's got her head lowered to his shoulder and is playfully scraping her teeth against it over the flannel. His mouth pops open, and Lydia covers it with her hand as he comes, a low grunt at the back of his throat. Her left hand is cupped over the sensitive head of his dick, making sure he doesn't spill everywhere, and after she gives him a moment to breathe, she reaches into her purse and pulls out makeup wipes, carefully scrubbing his cum off of her hand.

And only then does Stiles realize the extent to which she planned this. Although the smirk on her lips certainly helps, as does the way she subtly spreads her legs apart. He offers her his hand, and she places it under her skirt, eyes on the screen as she allows his fingers to circle her clit again and again over her panties.

"Your turn," he says huskily, as Lydia's legs squeeze around his hand

The way she stares at him when she finally comes on his fingers is enough to remind him of just how new this is, loving the girl who he has always loved.

Stiles thinks that maybe he breathes better when she loves him too.

* * *

"How's your plan going?" Scott asks one afternoon, when they're perched on bean bag chairs in his living room, thumbs going hard at the new x-box controllers that Scott's dad sent for his last birthday. And yeah, Stiles might hate Rafael, but these are pretty sweet. Luckily, he's always been petty enough to accept expensive gifts from people he hates, so there hasn't really been a moral dilemma here and he's pretty glad for that.

There's a bowl of fritos on the floor between them, and Stiles' mouth is full as he asks "What plan?" in a confused voice. Frito dust sprays everywhere, and Scott spares him one endeared glance before turning back to the video game that lights up his TV screen.

"Your plan to not have sex with your girlfriend," Scott says, the implied 'duh' making Stiles consider pausing the game just to flip him off. "Also known as the worst plan you have _ever_ come up with."

"Remember the time I took you into the woods to look for the other half of a dead body?"

"I do, and I think this one might be worse."

"She hasn't even noticed," Stiles lies, pressing particularly hard on the A button repeatedly, as if winning the game might get Scott to shut the fuck up about this subject.

"She's noticed," says Scott confidently. "You know it and I know it and Stiles, I know you're my best friend and I should technically be on your side, but if you keep hurting Lydia, I am _definitely_ going to have to beat you up."

"Shut up. She probably just thinks we're going slow. It's going fine."

"So you've been thinking about marrying this girl since you were in elementary school, but how are you seeing that plan working in the current state of the… ha, union."

"Oh, nice one."

"Thanks."

"Anyways, I haven't thought that far ahead yet, funnily enough."

Scott pauses the game, turning to look at Stiles with a serious expression on his face. It makes something in Stiles' stomach ache, and he wishes he could go back and time and talk himself out of talking himself out of acting normally with Lydia, because this _sucks_ , and he does miss her. And, yeah, he has noticed her noticing. And all of this just blows because he can't snap himself out of it because he's eighteen-years-old and, arguably, is probably too young to be in the same relationship that he is planning on being in until he's dead. Which isn't an excuse, really, but it doesn't make it any less true.

"Dude, you know I love you but… you're going to hurt her. Just… snap out of this. Please. I waited _way_ too long to see you two together to deal with you messing it up for something as stupid at this."

But that's just it, isn't it? The build-up. He's waited for this for _years._ He watched her have her first crush in elementary school (and, no surprise, it was not on him.) He watched her flirting with boys at middle school dances. He watched her making out with Jackson in the hallways in high school. He watched her grow up, grow into herself, grow through all the pain of being alive. And all that time, all he had wanted was exactly what he has now. And he feels frozen. He feels _stuck_ in his own incompetence.

Scott pokes him in the shoulder. "Hey. Stiles. Promise me you'll think about it?"

"Yeah," he says meekly, feeling the dreadful, weighty feeling that comes with knowing how a story ends before you've even gotten to the middle part yet. "I promise."

* * *

Let the record show that Stiles totally, one-hundred-percent, knows that this is _not_ what Lydia had given him a key to her house for.

She had given him one way back in junior year, when he had just started dating Malia and the deadpool was an immediate threat to all of their lives. And Lydia had been so high up on that list— he remembers the way that had squeezed at his chest; the way he felt every time he read those numbers and saw how close Lydia could be to death. At that point, she hadn't been able to protect herself yet, and Stiles had been so terribly, _acutely_ aware of it.

So when she had pressed a key into his open palm, unable to meet his eyes, he hadn't had the capacity to curb the relief that flooded through him at the sight of the little bronze object sitting in his hand. Because as helpless as Stiles has always been as the only human in the pack, even then, he knew that there wasn't much he wouldn't do to save Lydia— maybe there wasn't _anything_ he wouldn't do. Her safety always came first, even when he wasn't supposed to be in love with her. He still was, in those moments. He still let himself be in love with her when he needed himself to, even though it hurt later. He isn't a werewolf, and still he takes the pain for her and he would do it again.

Tonight, however, as he sneaks up the large staircase in the front hall of her house, stepping carefully via the light of his phone, it's not about protecting her. In fact, Stiles is assuming he should be protecting himself— in hindsight, he thinks maybe he should have worn a cup. It's one of the few nights of the week where they hadn't just ended up falling asleep at each other's houses, and he's currently tip-toeing down the plush carpet that leads to Lydia's bedroom, trying not to wake up her mom.

Her bedroom door is closed, the room dark, which he'd seen from the driveway. Unlike Stiles, Lydia _actually_ goes to sleep. He thinks it's pretty impressive. She thinks he's ridiculous for that.

Slowly, he curves his hand around the doorknob and opens it, slipping inside the dark bedroom and then promptly closing the door behind himself. He can see Lydia's dimly lit form lying in her bed, her back moving rhythmically up and down. Her hair is braided back, and she's wearing— _motherfucker_ , that's where that shirt went, he's been looking for it for a week.

What exactly is the best way to wake up a sleeping Lydia, anyways? He would assume she's going to kill him regardless of method, but there's probably a more pleasant way to do it than shining the light of his cell phone in her face and announcing that three people had just been killed by supernatural mermaids.

After setting the hot chocolate he'd made her by the door, Stiles tip toes around her bed until he reaches his side, peeling the covers back and slipping underneath them, glad he'd left his shoes by the door. It's so _warm_ under her covers; warm enough that Stiles could easily consider just falling asleep here and not moving until the morning. But instead, he tucks himself into Lydia's body until he's spooning her and then drops a kiss on her cheek.

"Stiles?" she murmurs, eyelids firmly closed.

"Hey, Lyds."

"Please tell me that I'm dreaming and you're not actually in my bed right now."

"'Fraid I can't."

Lydia yawns enormously.

"What do you want, Stilinski?"

"I brought you hot chocolate."

Her eyes pop open.

"How many people?"

"Wh—?"

"Usually when you bring me hot chocolate at any point before seven-thirty in the morning, someone's dead."

"Should I start bringing you tea?"

"Is there any tea in your entire house?"

"There must be some around from before my mom died," Stiles muses, scratching his chin while he thinks. Lydia sighs, pushing back her covers and heading to her lamp to turn the light on. Stiles sits up in her bed and watches as she places her hands on her hip and tilts her head to the side, surveying her options in her closet.

"How cold is it outside?"

"I mean, you probably shouldn't go out there without pants on, as cute as your underwear is."

"Oh, so you don't want your girlfriend parading around outside in a pair of 'cheekiest' panties?"

"I'm gonna give that a lukewarm 'no.'"

"Lukewarm, hmm?" Lydia echoes, putting on her jeans. "If you wanted to see my underwear, all you had to do was ask."

He laughs, a little pained, and hops off of her bed to grab her hot chocolate off of the floor.

"So everybody's already at the pier, they're just waiting on us," he says, avoiding her statement, and he can literally see the light in her eyes dim as he does. "Well, and probably Hayden, because she tends to attack people who wake her up."

"Who'd they send this time?"

"Malia volunteered."

"Liam's still too scared to try?"

"Yeeeep."

Lydia wiggles into a long-sleeved shirt and then feels around in the back of her closet until she comes up with a warm coat.

"Have you seen my boots?" she asks, eyes sweeping over rows and rows of shoes.

Stiles pokes his head into her closet, searching them.

"Uh, there's lots of boots. Those boots?"

"No."

"Those ones?"

"No."

"Those ones."

"You really think I would wear go-go boots to a pier to ask sirens why they won't stop killing people?"

"I mean, we've asked very, very nicely. Maybe you thought you could persuade them with your rad kicks."

"You can't pull off 'rad' or 'kicks,'" says Lydia indelicately, before placing her hand on his chest and kissing him on the mouth quickly. "And good morning, by the way."

"Good morning," he says, wrapping his arms all the way around her waist and tugging her in closer. "Did you sleep well?"

"I did, until some cute idiot snuck into my bed and woke me up."

"Sounds like a great guy. You should keep him."

Lydia breaks out of his hug to pick up her boots and pull them on, then snatches the hot chocolate out of Stiles' hand before she makes her way to her bedroom door.

"Okay," she says simply. "Maybe I will."

* * *

Usually, when he's in class, Stiles watches the clock. It likes to go particularly slow on days that his dad is working and Stiles knows that he gets to bring Lydia home to his empty house and try to fill it up with her smiles and her shoes kicked off at the foot of his bed and her lipstick stains on his favorite coffee mug, yellowed with age and with use.

But today is even worse, because he's not watching the clock at all. Instead, he's watching Lydia.

Her hair has been tossed into an artfully pretty bun, and she's wearing earrings that keep drawing his attention to the curve of her neck. It's weird, because Lydia doesn't wear earrings very much anymore, but maybe that's why he can't stop looking at them. They swing back and forth as she bends over her notes, tilting her head to the side just enough so that he can see a faded hickey at the side of her neck.

And, holy shit. The knowledge that he put it there is making class go even slower regardless of what's going on with the clock. Like, who cares about the fucking clock when you can spend the whole period staring at your girlfriend working on her favorite subject, her head bent low over the paper, her nose almost brushing against the page. He thinks maybe she had worn her hair like that to torture him, but that's crazy, right? She'd probably forgotten about the hickey, that's all. It's almost faded.

It's totally a coincidence that she'd spent all of lunch period today with her hand on his upper thigh, inching higher and higher, making him gulp down half a bottle of water in one go, just for something to do with his hands and a way to quench his dry mouth. That's just a coincidence. Right?

"Does anybody know what this is?" asks their teacher, pointing to an equation on the board, and Lydia straightens up in her chair, her short skirt pulling up on her thighs as she shifts higher in her seat. Stiles, sitting diagonally to her, watches as her eyes lift to the board and skate over it for a millisecond before she speaks up.

"The fundamental equation of calculus. The baseline for the mathematical processes we study within that field."

"Good. And what exactly does it tell us?"

She tosses her head back confidently, rattling off the answer instantaneously.

"It tell us that the net change of a continuous quantitative variable over a given time interval is equal to the integral of the rate of change of that quantity."

"Can you offer me an example?"

"The relationship between time and distance— velocity."

He watches the way she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth on the 'v' and is still staring when she cuts her eyes over to him, checking to see if he'd noticed. When she catches his gaze on her, she smirks down at her math paper, setting her elbow on her desk and resting her chin on her closed fist.

Lydia barely stops answering questions for the rest of class. At one point, she tells their teacher that her answer is wrong, going up to the board to correct the equation, and simultaneously teaching the class a simpler way of doing it. He feels, for lack of a better word, _teased_. So thoroughly fucking seduced that suddenly Stiles can't even fathom sitting through the rest of the school day with the knowledge that Lydia Martin is his girlfriend and he could have her right now, if he wanted to take her.

The bell rings, and Stiles is out of his seat in a shot, snatching her hand in his and trying to ignore her silent shakes of laughter as he drags her out of the classroom and into the nearest janitor's closet.

"What the _hell_ was that?" he demands, practically growling at her, but Lydia just smiles innocently at him.

"Oh. Was something _bothering_ you back there?"

"You know exactly what you were doing," he accuses, frustrated, but also _Frustrated_ , and Stiles doesn't know which one is worse.

"I was answering questions in class, Stiles. Participation in classroom situations is an integral part of the learning process."

"You were being a know-it-all."

His voice comes out in a low hiss that makes Lydia lift her chin stubbornly, bringing her face closer to his.

"And _you_ liked it."

He blinks at her for a moment before he finally gives in and snatches her body to his, smashing the two of them against the door. They kiss feverishly, wetly, spit and tongue and teeth and panting into each other's mouths, and to be honest, this isn't the first time Stiles has hooked up with someone in a closet but it's the first time he's considered it to be an act of both love and frustration simultaneously.

He's furious at her, he's furious at himself, and he can tell she's angry too, from the way she kisses him bruisingly, her nails raking down his back. He shivers with pleasure, but it's not meant to be kind. It's meant to set him on edge the way he's been setting her on edge ever since he decided that they weren't going to touch like this as much.

Now he pushes his thigh between her legs and allows himself to soak up her small gasps as she ruts herself against him, still biting feverishly at his lips.

"'S not enough, Stiles," she pants, looking up at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. "More."

He lowers his head into her neck, making a new hickey over the one that had just begun to fade.

"What do you want?" he replies.

" _You_ ," she growls, exasperated, but he just flips her around so that she's pressed against the door to the closet and then slides onto the floor so that he can pull her panties down her legs, tucking them into his pocket. When he rises again, he rubs his body close against hers, trapping her tighter against the door. In response, Lydia rucks up her dress and presses her ass against his crotch, simultaneously bending over to allow more room for his hand to snake around her bare waist, working her with his palm. "Fingers," Lydia snaps. " _Now,_ Stiles."

He slides his hands up from her clit to squeeze her breasts under her dress before he pushes her tighter against the door, so that her hard nipples are rubbing up against it. Then he lets his fingers slither down her body, tucking one inside of her while the other hand focuses on teasing her clit. His head stays in her neck as he gets her off, feeling her tight walls squeeze around his fingers one last time before she slams her palm against the door and cries out his name.

A moment later, Lydia's resting her head on the door and Stiles has his arms wrapped around her waist, hugging her from behind, still refusing to lift his head.

It means returning to reality, to a world in which he has to figure out how to walk away from this girl, _his_ girl, the one who he literally thinks makes the earth rotate just by waking up in the morning.

"We should get back to class," he mumbles against her skin.

"School's almost over," Lydia replies breathlessly. "Let me touch you. Please."

The ache in her voice is exactly what he needs to hear. It draws him out of his head; gives him the strength to remember what it feels like to walk away from something like this.

"I actually gotta go," he says, kissing her on the cheek. "But I love you, okay? I'll call you later."

He ducks into the bathroom when he leaves the closet, trying to calm his aching dick, but nothing he thinks about makes him feel any less terrible about the way her lower lip had trembled when he walked away.

* * *

"I think you might be the psychic one."

It's not the strangest way Lydia's ever answered the phone, but she usually doesn't do so with such a sleepy voice, her words slurring a little bit over the phone.

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

He's sitting in the chair at his desk, his phone sandwiched against his ear as he lazily plays solitaire on his laptop, barely paying attention to the game. But it's two thirty in the morning, and Lydia's just liked one of Danny's instagram posts, which can only mean one thing— she can't sleep.

"You knew I wasn't asleep."

"It's the magic of the internet," Stiles hums into the phone, making Lydia force out a laugh on the other hand, her voice tired. "Are you thinking about anything in particular?" He hopes the answer won't be one that he doesn't want to hear.

Over the receiver, he can hear her shifting around in her bed, the soft rustle of her sheets as she moves. Lydia's silent for a moment, yawning, he would assume, until suddenly she speaks and he realizes that isn't it at all.

"I was thinking about the closet yesterday."

Right. The closet. Where he had left his very confused and upset girlfriend alone in the dark, all in the name of idiocy.

"That was amazing," he tells her, hoping the rawness of his voice isn't as embarrassing as he thinks it is. "Think you'll be able to sleep if I tell you how amazing it was, Lyds?"

Her voice is curious.

"Maybe," she responds, and then she's silent, waiting.

Stiles closes down solitare, trying to put his thoughts in order. He's been so awful to her lately, but this is what he's good at, this is just _words_ — he can use words to make her feel as good as she makes him feel. He used to be better at giving her his words, but he's still good at it, he just has to choke them out more than he would have a year ago.

"I loved the way your ass was rubbing against my cock," is the first thing he says. She sucks in a breath sharply, a little unnerved, and Stiles shoves his face into his palm, trying to pull his shit together. "I don't know if you know this, but you kinda have a perfect ass, Lydia. I used to watch you in those little skirts you wore, and when you walked down the hallway in your heels, it would pull up and I could see the curve, and… god, Lydia. You pushing against me like that, it was fucking incredible. Made me so hard for you."

"Stiles," she murmurs, sounding audibly shaken. And, yeah, that's kind of a challenge, isn't it? That's just an opportunity to shake her up more.

"Will you touch yourself if I tell you that I wanna fuck you from behind with your skirt still on?" He holds his breath, waiting, and then she lets out a soft moan.

"Yes," she whispers to him— for him. " _Yes_."

"I wanna fuck you, wanna lick the sweat off your spine, wanna come all over your back, Lydia."

" _God_ , Stiles," she groans. "I want that so much. So much."

"Is your hand in your pussy, Lyds?"

Half of him can't believe how fucking _bold_ he's being right now; the other half can't believe it's taken him this long to have phone sex with her.

"Are you touching your cock?" she challenges in return.

"I could, if you wanted me to," he tells her, voice getting rougher. "D'you want me to?"

"I want to make you come," she tells him, voice desperate. Stiles unzips his jeans and fishes his dick out of his boxers, half-feeling like a kid who got caught with his hand in the candy jar. "I want you between my lips so that I can make you come; I want to know it was _me_."

"It's always you, Lydia. I swear to god, I always come biting back your name, every single fuckin' time. Even when I don't want to."

"You're touching yourself."

"Yeah," he groans. "How 'bout you? Where are your hands right now?"

"O-one is circling my clit, and the other one is… it's twisting my nipple the way you like to. The way I like it when you do it to me. But it doesn't feel as good as you."

"Your hands are soft."

"And smaller."

"I like them so much," Stiles grunts, gathering more precum and spreading it down his cock so that he can jerk himself more smoothly. "I like everything about you."

Her breath catches, and somehow he knows that he'd hit some sort of trigger. He stops tugging on his dick, confused at the hitch in her voice.

"Everything?"

"Yeah," Stiles replies, unnerved. "Everything." She's silent. "Lydia?"

"Nothing," she says. "Tell me… tell me what to do to myself."

He blinks at his glowing computer screen, not really seeing it, and doesn't speak for several moments, conflicted.

"Lydia—"

She cuts him off.

"Tell me what to do."

And if she doesn't want to talk about it, it's not like he can make her.

"Do you have a vibrator?"

Lydia's breath catches.

" _Yes_."

"What does it look like?"

"It's small and pink and—"

"Use it."

"What do you want me to do with it?"

He can hear her pulling open a drawer and rifling through it; can hear her slipping back into bed; can hear the low hum when she finally turns the vibrator on.

"I want you to rub it against your inner thighs— just your thighs," he adds, voice warning her. She does it. He can hear the buzzing. Can hear her breath hitching. "Your nipples now, Lydia. I want you to make them all sensitive for me. Just rub it in circles over them, okay? Do that for me?"

"Stiles," she moans, and he can picture her lying in her bed with her head thrown back and her chest heaving.

"I can picture you so perfectly, Lyds. You're so gorgeous." She whimpers. "You wet?"

"So, so wet."

"You ready to come?"

"Are _you_?"

He slides his hand rapidly up and down his cock, a little tighter now.

"I'm gonna go off so hard when I hear you come, Lydia. Lemme hear you, okay? Press it against your clit."

She holds the vibrator against her clit, and he can hear her going up until suddenly her breathy gasps stop and it's just silent for several moments as she comes. He can picture her _perfectly_ — the gaped open mouth, the hand she's got on her tit, the flush on her chest, the squeezed shut eyes. Stiles comes with a long, drawn-out groan at the knowledge that she's let him see her like this multiple times, and she'll let him see her like this again, because she _loves_ him.

Lydia exhales lengthily, the vibrator shuts off, and when she speaks, her words are slurred.

"How do you always know what to do to me? You're not even _here_."

"I pay attention. I know you." He smirks. "Plus, I mean, it's a vibrator. Doesn't really require much finesse."

"Let me live in the fantasy that you have a dissertation written on getting me off."

"Who says I _don't_?"

"Can I be your thesis advisor?"

" _Dirty_."

She laughs.

"Maybe."

"Think you can sleep now?"

"Mmm," Lydia responds. "Yes."

"Well then. Goodnight," Stiles says. "I love you."

"Love you too."

Her voice sounds far away, and he wants to ask her what she had been thinking about before she urged him to go on, but he's scared to hear the answer.

"Lydia," he says urgently. "Seriously. I... god, I love you more than anything, okay? I love you."

Maybe his tongue is loose from exhaustion and orgsam, but there's something about this moment that feels wrong in his stomach, and he doesn't know how to fix it except to assure her of what is simply true— she's everything to him. She just… is.

Lydia breathes out shakily into the receiver, and it sounds like she's _thinking_.

"I love you too." This time her voice is warmer. "Try to get some sleep, okay?"

"You know I won't," jokes Stiles.

"Hey, you just said you love me more than anything. You should listen to me. I give _excellent_ advice _._ "

"Yeah yeah."

"Go to bed."

"Stop fawning over me, Lydia, this is ridiculous, I _refuse_ to be subjected to—"

She hangs up on him before he can finish his fake dramatics, but she texts him a kiss emoji a few seconds later, which more than makes up for it.

He smiles as he falls asleep, thinking about how his favorite pillow still smells faintly of her shampoo.

* * *

Stiles hates going to therapy. No matter what, it's always the worst part of his day, because as much as he enjoys _talking_ , he doesn't enjoy the way Morrell looks at him like he should already have all the answers. Scott says that her calm, even tone makes him feel like everything is going to be okay, and Lydia says the number of degrees she has is a comfort— plus, it's not like they have other choices, right? She knows about the supernatural. She'd been there for all of it.

He'd had to go to therapy after his mom died, and he knows that it isn't Scott's or Lydia's first time in therapy either. But there's something that feels punishing about going into that office and having to talk about the demons that he trails behind him, like dirt on his shoe. It makes his entire body tense up, his heart beating too fast in his chest as he tries to push off the anxiety of saying the right thing

Morrell says there's no right answers. Morrell's full of shit.

Scott says that, too, though, and Stiles would believe him if Scott didn't just intrinsically _have_ all the right answers. He knows they're out there. They're just floating around in Scott's head, and Stiles doesn't have any access.

Which is the number one reason he's grumpy as hell as he storms into his bedroom, dropping his bag onto the floor and letting out a long suffering sigh as he slams the door closed with a clenched fist.

"Wow," comes a voice, causing Stiles to jump out of his skin. "I know you hate therapy, but this might be a new low."

He turns around to see Lydia lying on his bed, peering up at him from under dark eyelashes. A few pieces of curled hair have fallen in her face, but she makes no effort to move them out of her way as she watches him look at her, taking her in.

His girlfriend is wearing an emerald green bra with lacy black scalloping over it, underwear to match, and a black garter belt that attaches to lacy black stockings which are pulled all the way up to her thighs.

"Uh."

He swallows, causing a small twitch on her painted red lips.

"What? Cat got your tongue?" She stands up, hair seeming a little extra bouncy as she walks towards him, the relaxed look on her face indicating that she has no idea she's walking towards him in heels and lingerie. "That's just… too bad. Because I was thinking that it might be a good time for you to use it on me."

"Oh," he breathes out in a puff of air, frowning deeply as Lydia strides up to him and slides her hands up his chest, yanking him down to her with the collar on his flannel.

"I miss you," she tells him, before cupping his chin and tilting his head to the side so that she can press kisses against his neck. "I thought I might give you some… inspiration."

"Thoughtful," he says huskily. "Just, ah, really thoughtful of you."

She lifts her chin up to kiss him, her breasts pressing against his chest, rubbing on him, and he can feel it all the way in his stomach— the way she's _touching_ him, the softness of her hands, the feeling that he gets as he slides his palms down her curls, feeling them tickle his skin as she moves her lips against his, slowly drawing kisses out of him.

"I got so turned on thinking about you seeing me like this," Lydia murmurs to him, voice raspy. "You make me so—" She trails off, a little helpless, but he dips his head deeper to kiss her again, to show her that she doesn't need to finish the sentence if she can't.

And he realizes, at some point after she's started palming his dick over his jeans but before he loses his head completely, that nobody has ever done something like this for him before. Nobody has ever dressed up in lingerie just for him, nonetheless _Lydia Martin_ , the girl who he'd been in love with since he knew how to label the feeling he got when he looked at Lydia Martin, did.

She'd made love what it is for him. She'd taught him that without even trying. Everything about falling in love with Lydia has always been so effortless, and now he's sitting here like a dumbass, trying to make it harder when it doesn't _need_ to be this difficult.

"You look so beautiful," he says, finally letting his hands wrap tightly around her waist, squeezing her close. "I really—"

"I know you hate therapy," she says, shaking her head to indicate that he doesn't need to tell her. "So I thought maybe I could give you a positive association with it. And then maybe you could eventually be conditioned to not dread Wednesdays so much."

"There is no human way I could have anything but a positive association with you in this outfit," he tells her, mouth dry.

"Good," she murmurs. "How do you feel about taking me out of it, though?"

He's got her flat against the bed faster than he would care to admit, crawling his way up her body so that he can give her a searing kiss through which he can pour all of his gratefulness. Lydia whimpers as Stiles' hands slide down to cup her over the silky panties, already damp with want, and right then, it doesn't fucking matter that he might not be good enough. He'll get there for her, he always has. He's spent his life _trying_ for Lydia Martin. He'll do it again and again until he gets the results he wants.

And that's that.

"Hi," he says to her. She smiles, a little silly, like she isn't sure what will burst out of her if she opens her mouth. Finally, she takes a deep breath and says,

"This is what you want, right? I'm… what you want?"

And that's the simplest answer he's ever given to anybody.

"Yes. God, absolutely yes, Lydia. _Yes_."

"Then I don't want you to stop touching me," she tells him firmly, looking him dead in the eyes. There's something so serious there that it makes his stomach flip, and all he wants to do is drown himself in those breathy sighs that she emits when she's trying to be quiet but simply _can't_.

He promises her that he won't, the words buried against her skin, pressed into her neck and her wrists and her thighs. He's just bringing them back up to her lips when the door to his bedroom bursts open, revealing Liam standing in the entryway, looking panicked.

"Hey!" he says, "the sirens are singing again and— oh, _ew_!"

"Liam," Stiles growls, throwing a pillow at him, "get _out_!"

"I'm sorry!" he says, grabbing the pillow and placing it over his eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd be doing this and wearing that and—"

"Liam," Lydia says shortly, "Out. _Now_. "

"Okay okay sorry!" he says again, exiting the room and whipping the door closed behind himself.

Lydia lets out a sigh of relief, falling back against the remaining pillow and slinging her arm over her eyes, trying not to laugh.

"I'm so sorry," Stiles says, feeling the heat on his cheeks. He suddenly wants to sink into the ground.

"It's not your fault," she says blandly. "We should have trained him better."

"I can still hear you," calls Liam meekly.

"Dude, _go away_ ," shouts Stiles.

"But, seriously, the sirens."

Lydia huffs exasperatedly, getting off of the bed with a regretful glance in Stiles' direction. Her clothes are hanging up in Stiles' closet; she slides a dress on over the stockings, checking herself in Stiles' mirror and fixing her hair before she opens the door and takes the pillow back from Liam's tight grip.

"We are _never_ talking about this again," she says emphatically. "Understood?" she adds sweetly. He nods, fervent enough to satisfy Lydia. "Okay. Let's go."

* * *

"I don't see why we _all_ have to go to the airport to pick up Isaac," Stiles grumbles one last time. He's extremely hopeful that somebody will hear him and finally catch on to the idiocy of this concept, but it's doubtful. There's two cars stuffed full of road trip games, snacks, and duffel bags, because yeah, Isaac Lahey had decided to book a flight that came in several hours away and Scott McCall had volunteered the pack to pick him up from the airport.

"He's coming back for _us_!" Scott had explained a few weeks ago, his eyes wide as he tried to impress the point into all of them. "He's coming for prom and graduation and it's going to be _great_. But it's only fair that we go pick him up from the airport."

Which would have been fine, if Isaac hadn't been a dumbass about booking his flight.

"Let it go, Stiles," Malia says from her place behind his seat. "And let me drive."

"No," Stiles, Scott, and Lydia say simultaneously.

"You're not touching my jeep."

"What's the big deal? I sat in the driver's seat once while you were gone," Malia points out casually.

Stiles rounds on Lydia and Scott.

" _What_?"

"Oh relax," Lydia says, rolling her eyes. "She only broke parts of the steering wheel and scratched the interior detailing." Stiles stares at her, eyes wide and horrified. "Stiles. I'm joking."

"Yeah, this car is so old, there is no interior detailing," Scott says, clearly trying to be helpful.

But fuck them, because Stiles thinks this car has _class_.

"This car is vintage," he says, turning the key in the ignition. It splutters. He groans internally. "You love vintage things," he adds to Lydia.

"Vintage fashion? Yes. But this car is the automobile equivalent of shoulder pads."

"Can we just take Lydia's car?" Malia asks hopefully. Stiles grunts in annoyance and turns the key again.

"Fuck. No." The car finally comes to life, causing him to whoop delightedly, doing an "I-told-you-so" dance in the driver's seat. Scott laughs, with him, clearly happy to see Stiles acting like himself, and just this once, it doesn't feel fake. It just… doesn't. He thinks that might have something to do with the fact that he slept next to Lydia last night, and she had dived _for_ his arms during a nightmare instead of away from them.

She trusts him. And that just feels… so incredibly good. In ways that are completely inexplicable.

Lydia brings him back to himself in ways that he will never stop being grateful for.

"Everybody ready to go?" asks Stiles, looking around at the other passengers in the car. Malia is releasing and retracting her claws, looking bored already despite the fact that they haven't left yet. Scott is holding a copy of _Mrs. Dalloway_ on his knee, hoping to get some reading done. And Lydia has a map on her lap— an actual paper map, like, unfolded and everything, stretched across her lap. He would remind her that they have GPS on their phones, but he knows that she'll shoot him a stubborn look and tell him that GPS is a waste of both data and battery, so he squeezes his lips together and offers her a smile instead. It's slightly awed, and she meets his expression with a look on her face that is almost shy as she happily mashes her lips together.

The softness in her eyes, however, is enough to make Stiles wink at her before he turns the key in the ignition and begins the long drive to the San Francisco airport.

Mason's car trails after them as they drive quickly through the California streets. Scott and Malia play car games using their werewolf skills, mostly trying to catch what people on the highway are saying within their cars as Stiles zips by them. Stiles and Lydia go back and forth between bickering over the radio, yelling at the radio when Lydia inevitably wins and they're stuck listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," and arguing about the way Stiles frequently cuts people off and doesn't bother using a turn signal.

Mostly it feels normal, except halfway there they realize that they forgot snacks, which feels worse than it should given the fact that Kira had always been the one who packed snacks for them. She always seemed to know exactly what everybody would want— yogurt and granola for Lydia, blue gatorade and pringles for Stiles, goldfish for Scott, beef jerky for Malia— and it feels downright strange to not have her in the middle seat between Scott and Malia, playing her favorite indie songs on the aux cord.

Lydia must notice the way Scott's face falls at the fact that he had forgotten snacks, somehow taking it to be a personal failure of sorts, because she snatches up Stiles' phone and switches the car over to the aux setting, scrolling through until she finds something that satisfies her. As the beat begins to play on the radio, Stiles reaches over and squeezes her hand before immediately beginning to sing in an exaggerated Scottish accent.

"When I wake UP, well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to _you_." He directs it towards Lydia, and she preens a little, exaggeratedly, like she knows how much he means it but also how happy he is that he's _allowed_ to mean it.

Scott catches on immediately, joining in on the singing, and Malia watches bemusedly as the two boys begin shouting out the lyrics. Stiles wants to ask Lydia how she knew, but he knows that's a ridiculous question. He can remember a sunny afternoon with Allison in Malia's spot and Lydia in Scott's; the two of them hiding their smiles as the boys shouted out the lyrics in the front seat. He doesn't remember where they were going, but he remembers glancing back at Lydia and seeing her shaking her head as she stared out the window. He remembers the way he almost crashed the car because of the way wisps of her hair were falling around her face.

"DA DA LA DA!" hollers Scott, and Stiles is jerked into the response, a reflex. When he looks over at Lydia to check, he finds her making the same face that she had been before.

Except this time? This time she's not looking out the window. She's looking at him.

* * *

They're in the middle of hollering out the lyrics to "Crocodile Rock" when Malia abruptly announces that she is hungry. Stiles doesn't even wait to see Scott's face fall; instead, he looks over at Lydia and asks her if she'd seen a rest stop sign coming up.

"Take the next exit," she tells him, and Malia sits back in satisfaction while Scott texts the kids, letting them know that they're making a stop. As Stiles pulls off of the highway and into a gas station, Malia perks up at the sight of some woods behind it. Food is forgotten as she rushes to the trees, letting out an enthusiastic scream at finally being free from the confines of the jeep.

"I'll fill the tank," offers Scott as though Malia's behavior is totally normal, which is how Stiles and Lydia end up going into the convenience store by themselves, his hand on her back as they wander through the fluorescently lit aisles.

It isn't until they're standing in front of the refrigerator full of drinks that Lydia speaks.

"I've always thought that our relationship was about evolution," she says, voice light.

"Um, sure, I guess?"

"So, would you say that we started off here?" she says, touching his hand where it rests high on her back.

"Y-yeah?"

"So, by definition of evolution, shouldn't it be a little more… _here_?" asks Lydia, sliding his hand down to her ass.

Stiles swallows. He wonders if there's any confetti for purchase in the store that he can throw into the air in celebration because _fuck yes_ , Lydia's ass is something he's only really had access to when they were making out and somehow it feels even better under the warmth of his hand when she is staring up at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"Are you… giving me permission to grope you?"

She thinks about this for a moment.

"I'm just saying that technically we should be moving forward. Or, you know. _Down_."

He stares at the floor, a smile on his lips, as she moves forward to look at the different trail mixes, her hand keeping his hand on her body. When she glances up and notices the look of awe that he is certain is still in his expression, her sly smile grows as she shifts her hips back and forth underneath his hand, moving to the beat of the song. Stiles can feel his cheeks reddening when Lydia licks her lips before beginning to mouth the lyrics. His throat is dry as he says,

"I, uh, don't think I know this song."

"It came out when you were gone," she tells him, mouthing _you make me glow, but I cover up won't let it show_ with the lyrics as her eyes skate up his body, starting somewhere around his crotch and gliding upwards to meet his gaze. "Lots of things happened while you were gone."

She realized how much she loved him when she was gone. She remembered him when he didn't exist. She saved his life when he was gone.

And this random song came out that apparently is making Lydia feel like she wants to pounce on him, if the look in her eyes is any remote indication.

She takes a step closer, placing her hands on his hips before tilting her chin upwards and taking what she wants, molding their lips together. His other hand finds her ass as well, and both of them tighten around her, pulling her skirt upwards. He lets his fingers drift lower, whispering against the curve that has been taunting him since she had started wearing skirts with heels.

"Fuck, I want you right now," he murmurs as she slips her hands under his shirt, neither of them caring about the fact that they're in a public place. Lydia pulls back, her eyes twinkling.

"Bathroom?"

His heart lifts at the thought, but he forces himself to breathe out, shaking his head.

"Scott and Malia will come looking for us."

Her eyes narrow.

"Fine. But don't think you're getting off easy."

"What do you—?" he begins, but his question is answered when Lydia stomps away from him and snatches up an oversized lollipop from the box behind the cash register, turning around to face him again with a triumphant smile on her face. And Stiles doesn't actually need his mystery board to figure out the fact that she is _probably_ trying to kill him.

* * *

The hotel that Lydia had selected is fancier than any of them had quite anticipated. Stiles can sense how uncomfortable Scott is by the way he locks his limbs together in the lobby as Lydia approaches the front desk, offering them a gleaming smile.

"Scott," hisses Malia out of the corner of her mouth, "Why do they have cucumbers in the water?"

"It's supposed to taste good," Liam says, staring down at his shoes. He's probably more used to these sorts of places than they are, but he still seems antsy in his beat-up sneakers and ratty jeans. In fact, Mason is the only one who is completely at ease as Lydia strides back over to them, a plethora of room keys in hand.

"Malia and Hayden," she says, holding one up. "Here you go. Mason and Liam? Mhm. And, Scott, here you go."

Stiles makes to grab Scott's roomkey, assuming it's his as well, but Lydia throws him an odd look as she hands the key off to Scott, bypassing him.

"Why does Scott get his own room?" Stiles asks, confused.

"He's sharing with Isaac when he gets here tomorrow. It's just for one night."

"Okay," Stiles says, squinting, "But where am I—?" He stops talking when he sees the incredulous looks on both Scott's and Lydia's faces. "Oh."

Lydia hands him a keycard before flipping her hair over her shoulder and directing her gaze towards the rest of the pack, who are watching this interaction with varying levels of amusement.

"Let's go," she says, turning around and stalking off towards the elevator.

"She seems pissed," Hayden comments casually. When Stiles swings his head around to gauge Scott's reaction, his best friend has a concerned look on his face.

"Stiles—" he says, a plea in his voice, but Stiles just shakes his head and grabs his duffel bag and Lydia's rolling suitcase before he follows her to the elevator.

The other pack members have adjoining rooms, but Lydia stalks past those, walking deeper down the hall until she locates their number on a corner room. Stiles follows behind her meekly, not sure how to tell her that none of this is her fault, and that the problem is that he has never wanted _anything_ as badly as he wants her— to be able to love her, to be able to fuck her, to be able to keep her. Words used to come so easy, but it's been a long time since he had been the boy who could say everything to her without worrying about any sort of consequence, so he doesn't say anything at all as Lydia sits down on her side of the bed and begins rummaging through her purse for her phone charger.

Stiles stands there, watching her stiff form for a moment, before realizing that he has to tell her. He just has to _speak_. He's opening his mouth to do so when both of their phones buzz, a text from Scott inviting them to come to the pool.

And Stiles wants to tell Lydia that she doesn't have to spend four minutes staring between her high waisted bikini and her regular one, the one that doesn't cover up her scars as well, because he loves her and loves her scars and loves everything about the way Lydia Martin embodies herself. But his words stick in his throat as she finally snatches up the high waisted bikini and storms into the bathroom, leaving a cloud of anger in her wake. He stares at the bikini and wonders when he had become too useless to tell her how beautiful she is when she cries, when she screams, when she has scars, when she _breathes_.

But his words seem to be gone in the wake of her anger, and neither of them speaks very much when they're at the pool. The rest of the pack plays chicken, has diving contests, and has splash fights, but Lydia sits on the edge of the pool with her feet dangling over and frowns at her own reflection in the shifting waters.

At one point, Stiles walks up to her and stands between her legs, his hands on her thighs as he offers her a hopeful smile.

"I'm sorry it didn't occur to me that we'd be rooming together. It's just, you know, Mason and Liam were, not Liam and Hayden, and it just made sense—"

"Did you not want to room with me?" asks Lydia abruptly.

Stiles shakes his head, too fast, maybe, but he doesn't care.

"God, no, Lydia, that's not… I _love_ sleeping next to you. Whenever we can manage it, it's like, the best sleep I have that week. I promise."

She stares at him, mashing her lips together uncertainly. When she speaks, her voice is raw.

"The scars on my side."

"Yeah?"

"That night… your birthday. You saw them, right?"

"Um, I guess?"

"Right," she says, pushing his hands off of her legs and grabbing a towel to wrap around herself before she leaves the pool area.

When Stiles turns around, the whole pack is staring at him, more than mild concern in their eyes.

" _What_."

Hayden looks between Malia and Scott before she shrugs and looks back at Stiles.

"You fucked up," she says simply.

And that's basically all it takes for Stiles to scramble out of a pool, snatch up a towel, and chase after Lydia.

* * *

She's in the shower when he gets back to their hotel room, and Stiles paces back and forth for several minutes, antsy and upset, before he makes Scott let him into his room toand use the shower just for something to do. He takes too long, letting the steam fill the room, almost feeling as though he doesn't deserve to breathe as easy as he would on a normal day. By the time he gets out of the shower, his fingers are pruny and he doesn't recognize his own face when he wipes condensation off of the mirror, peering in and trying to find himself.

But he redresses. Walks back to his hotel room with determination in his stride, suddenly, because he promised himself that he would _never_ hurt Lydia the way the other guys in her life had, and he's not going to fucking go back on that promise because of some stupid goddamn insecurity about how good he's gonna be at fucking her. If Lydia thinks he doesn't want her, that's something else entirely. That's beyond any of Stiles' human insecurities, because there is nothing more human than the way he loves her, the way he can never stop thinking about her, the way he doesn't go a day of his life without thinking about their future.

He slides his key against the card reader with determination, wrenching the door open, and is surprised to find Lydia sitting on the bed with dry hair and a compact, putting on mascara. She's wearing a black camisole and silky pajama shorts and she doesn't look up when he comes in, her mouth set determinedly.

"Lydia," he says, a little too loud. "I'm literally terrified of screwing this up with you." And, yeah, that gets her attention. "A while back, Scott thought we'd already had sex, and he made this comment about how you'd had… I dunno, more experience than me, I guess? And my brain translated that— as it always does, by the way, because have you seen you?— to thinking… no, not thinking. To _knowing_ that I'm not good enough. I'm never gonna be good enough for you, Lydia, because you deserve the fucking world and I'm just this asshole who loves you and wants to give as much of that world to you as I can. But I've spent the last few weeks being so crazy irrational, Lydia. I've spent them being completely terrified that I'm gonna fuck up the sex part, which somehow seems _worse_ than messing this up just 'cause I'm _me_ , because you… you deserve everything, and I'm sorry, I don't want to disappoint you and just have you finally wake up from whatever trance you're in that makes you believe I'm good enough for you. I don't want to lose you over _sex_."

She's staring at him with a completely empty, blank expression on her face. Slowly, she closes her eyes, and Stiles watches her uncertainly, not sure how to respond because, for once, he can't read her. Which, quite possibly, means that Lydia doesn't know how she's feeling either.

"I had sex for the first time when I was fifteen." Her voice, quiet and cautious, makes his stomach drop to the ground. There's an ache in it that makes him want to protect her, but he can't bring himself to move. "I had just turned fifteen, Jackson and I had been dating for less than a year. I was hanging out at his house, his parents weren't home, and we were bored. We didn't feel like doing anything. So we had sex."

He's just hovering in the doorway, not sure what to do because he can feel the need to comfort her tugging at him, but at the same time he knows that she wants to spit this out. She doesn't want him to touch her. She wants him to listen.

"I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I wasn't in love with Jackson. I did love him. But I didn't love Aiden. And I didn't love any of the other boys I was with after Jackson. I didn't fall in love with anyone until _you_." For a moment, both of them blink at that, at how _tangible_ it is in the context of their lives. Lydia didn't love anybody but him after Jackson. Lydia _picked_ him. She's sitting here with her voice shaking, her eyes vulnerable, picking him all over again by telling him all this, by not walking away. "And suddenly you were sleeping with someone else, and I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that a part of my heart was broken because you hadn't _waited_ for me. That somebody else had your mouth and your hands and your virginity, when _I_ wanted those things. At some point I started believing in the same fairytale you did, just because the story was coming out of your mouth."

His voice is pained when he speaks. "Lydia—"

"I had sex one time after Allison died. I thought it would make me feel better, but it didn't, and I had to call Scott to come pick me up because I couldn't drive. And I didn't sleep with anyone after that, and I think it's because I knew I was waiting for you. I was waiting for you." She has tears glimmering in her eyes, but they don't fall, and she meets his gaze with a determined look that makes Stiles fall in love with her all over again. "I thought I had made this clear, but sometimes I can't say what I want to, so let me tell you in the plainest terms possible… Stiles. I have never been in love with anyone the way I'm in love with you. Not ever."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, but his words get lost when she speaks over him, louder. Which makes sense, Stiles supposes, because he has been speaking over everything she wanted these last few weeks. He hasn't been listening. And Lydia deserves a chance to talk.

"I didn't want to love anybody after Jackson, but you weren't a choice for me, and I can't say that about anybody, Stiles. I just… fell in love with you. So I don't _care_ if we have to work on it, I don't care about any of the things you probably think I care about, none of that matters. _When I kissed you_ , I knew that I wasn't going to let this go. And nothing is going to make me change my mind about that."

His voice is cracked as he asks, "Which time?"

And she smiles, a little sad. "Does it matter?"

Stiles crosses the room, crushing their mouths together as quickly as he can, kissing her hard, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands on her cheeks. She whimpers into his mouth as he kisses her, and her palm slides up his chest, over his rapidly beating heart, feeling the way life thumps through his body. He is warm all over as they lie down on the bed, settling, and something within his chest locks into place, deadbolted.

Permanent.

"Exactly how many hours am I going to have to beg for your forgiveness?" he asks, pulling back eventually and panting against her mouth.

"A million," she teases. "Or, if you want to fast track it…"

"Yes please," he murmurs, kissing her neck.

"Mmm. If you want to fast track it, you can do what you did to me on your birthday."

She doesn't have to ask again. Stiles slides down the bed, hands splayed out across her sides, slipping down with him, following the path of Lydia's body. He keeps his eyes on his fingers, wondering if it's possible that he could be dreaming, but then Lydia lifts her hips and he pulls off her shorts and suddenly he knows that nothing about this moment is anything he could dream up.

"Missed you," he says to Lydia quietly, before parting her folds carefully with his fingers and finding her clit. He slides his tongue a little beneath it, and that's her one moment of warning before he lifts his tongue to the sensitive nub and presses flat against it, moving back and forth in a way that makes her hips jump in surprise.

" _Stiles_!"

The sigh gets ripped out of her, and that's what makes him almost lose his mind at the idea that he just made Lydia's hips rocket towards his mouth, searching for pleasure on his tongue.

"Sit on my face," he says abruptly. "I want you to, Lydia, please?"

She sits up, nodding with wide eyes as Stiles takes his shirt off before lying flat against the bed, hands running lightly up and down her legs as she straddles him and carefully lowers herself onto his waiting tongue.

Lydia is delicate at first, letting him carefully explore what it's like to fuck her like this, and okay, he's never done it like this before but _still_ , he resents any sort of implication that he is delicate because there is no fucking way he is going to accept that as a character description. He wraps his hands around her legs and pulls her flatter against him, wanting the weight of her, wanting to be breathless.

"Mmm, Lydia," he moans into her, and when he opens his eyes, he sees her with her head tossed back, her hands stroking her breasts prettily.

"S-Stiles… god, so good, Stiles, so _good_."

He gives her clit a break, moving in longer strokes up and down her folds, parting them with his tongue and finding the different places inside of her that his mouth wants to become acquainted with over and over and over again.

With her hands in his hair, it literally feels like she's riding him right now, her thighs squeezing tight around his cheeks, her hips moving slowly, creating more friction than his tongue would. As her movements start to get quicker, Stiles places his hands on her hips, guiding her, and flattens his tongue, letting her fuck his face how she wants to.

Stiles has never been bothered by his clothes on the floor or an unorganized backpack, so, needless to say, when Lydia comes all over his face and he realizes what a mess he must be, he is not bothered by that either. Like, at all. Well, actually, he is, but in a way that's making his jeans a goddamn nuisance, not in a way that makes him not want to try for orgasm number two.

But Lydia falls onto the bed next to him, her chest moving up and down quickly as she places her hand on her forehead, covering one of her eyes and smooshing her nose inward as she stares at him, a small smile on her face.

"Your mouth is kind of… ridiculous?" she tells him, a small, shy laugh erupting from her chest, and it makes him laugh too, seeing her light like that.

"Yeah?"

"God, yes," Lydia says emphatically, sliding her hand down to cover her mouth. She seems to realize what she's doing, because in a second, she's pulled it away, her lips tugging up into a hopeful smile. "Could I interest you in trying out mine?"

He opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly his brain is a scramble of words, and he can't remember how to make sounds as Lydia glides down the bed, eyes on his, teeth scraping her bottom lip. He follows her, almost as if he's in a trance, sitting up until he's at the edge of the bed and Lydia is kneeling on the floor, staring up at him with eyes that are too contently exuberant to quite fit with the moment they're in. He doesn't want to call her out on that, though. He wants her to keep looking like this, in a way that implies _more_ , in a way that implies meaning, in a way that implies the fervent love that she offers him every time she beams at him with her eyes instead of her mouth.

"Take off your pants," Lydia coaxes, voice soft as she reaches behind her head and begins to gather up her hair, working it into a long braid that she pulls over her shoulder, so that it tickles its way down her breasts. Stiles kicks his jeans off, feeling a little embarrassed at his eagerness, but that's nothing compared to how achingly hard he is when Lydia finally watches him peel off his boxer briefs and push them to the side with his foot.

It's only then that he realizes that this is really the first time she's seen his dick. She'd seen it in the dark movie theater, but not _really_. She's palmed it over his jeans and rubbed against it; felt it against her clit. She knows how it feels. But she's never looked at it like this, and suddenly Stiles considers hiding as her green eyes fix themselves on it, lips twisting into a strange sideways smile that he hasn't seen her wear since she was punching his knee on the floor of the locker room.

"Lydia," he croaks, voice cracking like he's back in middle school. "It may not seem this way to you, but actually this is a deeply stressful encounter for me and I would really appreciate some type of positive affirmation that I don't need to crawl into the ground."

She ignores this, choosing instead to slowly lick her palm before gripping him lightly and stroking her way up his dick, then sliding her hand back down, watching the way his skin moves underneath her palm. She inhales deeply, staring at him under her, and he can barely focus on the feeling because all he can concentrate is the slow exhale through her nose before she finally whispers, "You're so _pretty_."

Then her mouth is warm around the tip of his cock, sucking for a few moments before experimentally rubbing her tongue along the underside of him, seeming more curious than anything else. Not like she's trying to get him off at all— more like she just wants to know how he tastes after wondering for so long.

It's exactly how he'd felt the first time he'd gone down on her, and something _bursts_ inside of his chest at the knowledge that Lydia could feel the exact same way he had, that Lydia could _know_ what it's like to want him so achingly, that Lydia could be experiencing that same flow of love and awe and heartstopping exhilaration that Stiles hadn't known existed until he'd told her she didn't need to say it back.

She finally widens her mouth and takes him deeper, sliding up and down, and there's something about seeing his dick resting against the side of her cheek, knowing that he's heavy in her mouth, that makes tears spring into Stiles' eyes.

"I love you," he murmurs, tucking a loose piece of hair from her braid behind her ear. She looks up at him with wide eyes, humming contently around his cock. Takes him deeper, careful not to smile, and hollows her cheeks, still staring at him. "Love you so much," he says again, brushing his thumb across her forehead, just wanting to touch her.

She releases him for a moment to rub her spit up and down his cock with her hand, looking at him like she wants to say something, but she opens her mouth and closes it and then, very carefully, brings a hand to her chest, letting her eyes settle on his as she feels her heart pounding underneath her open palm.

They watch each other, breathing, and when Stiles licks his bottom lip quickly, Lydia's mouth is back on him, her eyes fluttering shut, eyelashes brushing her skin as she bobs up and down his cock.

Lydia swallows when he comes, a knee-jerk, an instinct, like he's _hers_ and she hadn't even considered the idea of not taking all of him.

And, if he's being honest, watching her slowly open her eyes to him and stare at him with adoration in her expression, he has never felt so full of anything in his entire life.

* * *

Stiles answers the door even knowing that his cheeks are bright red and his hair is a mess.

"Um," Scott says. "Good morning?"

"Hiya," says Stiles a little manically, wondering if Scott has noticed that he's shirtless. Oh, let's be real. Scott's totally noticed that he's shirtless. "What's up?"

"Did you guys finish… your fight?" asks Scott with a knowing grin.

"Wh—? Oh yeah, yeah, all good, we talked it out, no yelling here. Well, uh, no fighting here. Yep. Yup. Yeah."

"Okay," Scott says slowly. "Well, we're supposed to leave to pick up Isaac at the airport in ten minutes. Are you guys ready?"

Stiles blinks.

"Um, can you just hang on one second?" He closes the door behind himself and turns towards the bed, where Lydia is still lying against the pillows, half naked, waiting for him. "So…?"

"Stiles," she says dramatically, tossing her head back. He watches her boobs jiggle and reaches down to adjust his erection beneath his pajama bottoms. "I'm _so_ hot."

"Yeah," he says, smirking a little. "I know."

"I'm so hot I have a _fever_."

He brightens, getting it.

"Right! Yes! Fever." He snatches his keys off of the side table, opens the door halfway, and sticks his hand out, offering them to Scott. "Lydia's sick," he says, straight-faced. (Behind him, Lydia coughs exaggeratedly.) "See? Sick."

"Oh okay," Scott says, taking the keys from Stiles. "Do you want us to go without you?"

"Yes," says Stiles solemnly. "I have to stay here and take care of my very, very sick girlfriend."

"Sure, sure," Scott says amicably. "You know, this whole thing would be way more convincing if your entire room didn't reek of sex, buddy."

He wiggles his eyebrows twice before turning around and walking down the hallway, leaving Stiles to stare after him, stricken. He closes the door, almost in a fog, and turns around to face Lydia.

"Did… did we just get caught?"

She nods, only a little sympathetic.

"We did."

"I'm _so_ good at lying."

"Um, not to werewolves."

"No, I can even slow my heartbeat!"

"Are you going to be obsessing over this all morning?" sighs Lydia.

" _Yes_."

"Oh really?"

"Yes!"

She lifts one eyebrow before she places her open palm on the cool white sheet and murmurs "Come to bed, Stiles," in a soft, sweet voice.

He groans, already sinking to his knees and grumbling under his breath as he dives back onto the bed head first between her legs.

* * *

They decide to go on a date.

A part of Stiles thinks that both of them want something to associate with a first time. They've spent the past few days getting _well_ acquainted with each other's hands and mouths, but there's something that just feels so pretty about the idea of spending a night together and intending on ending it with sex.

They go to a restaurant and nearly get kicked out because they get into an obnoxiously loud argument about the German healthcare system, and Stiles lets Lydia eat all of the mushrooms off of his plate because he hates them and she likes them.

Then they go downtown and walk around, holding hands, eating soft serve ice cream, and they don't go into the posh little shops, instead choosing to take advantage of the quiet and warm spring evening. Eventually, the sun has set and they sneak onto the playground behind their elementary school, where Stiles pushes Lydia on the swing and makes her shriek with laughter as he does underdog without warning her first.

She's beaming as she stumbles off of the swing and into his arms, a little giddy as she presses a chaste kiss against his mouth before letting him twirl her in a circle. Her skirt fans out and he thinks he might finally know what it feels like to be _too_ happy as Lydia lets go of his hand and spins across the sandbox a few more times, her bare, painted toes wiggling in the dirt.

"I can't believe you did competitive ice skating," Stiles complains, catching her around the waist and tugging her over to him. "You know it's ridiculous that you're perfect at everything, right?"

"I'm also classically trained in ballet."

"What? When did you stop?"

"Freshman year."

"Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes." She sees the look on his face and shakes her head, stretching up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the forehead. "It's okay," she says, still on her toes, nuzzling her nose against his. "I was too short to really be good anyways."

"You're not too short," he argues, a little stubbornly, but it makes her laugh, and in the end that's all that really matters. "You're _perfect_."

"If you're trying to persuade me to let you carve our initials into a tree, it's working."

"I was thinking instead I could take you home?" he suggests quietly. "It's getting kinda dark, and knowing me, I would cut off a finger."

"Oh, we _definitely_ can't have that." She smiles, kissing his fingers. "Okay. Let's go."

Which is how they end up standing on her front porch, kissing goodnight, both of them knowing that he's going to come inside.

"I'm wearing new panties," murmurs Lydia, and it sends a shiver through Stiles' entire body. "I bought them thinking about you taking them off me."

"Oh yeah?" says Stiles, sliding his hands from her hips to her ass, using it to pull her closer to him. "Wanna let me in, then?" He pauses. Grins. "Hey, that was a pun."

"Mhm."

"Like, let me in but also—"

"No, I got that."

"Ha. Good one."

"If you keep that up, I'm not letting you in in either sense," she teases.

"Waste of a good pair of panties."

"It's also a waste of the perfectly good semi you got when I mentioned them."

He grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You just called my hard on _good_ ," he sing-songs. "Oh man, I need a second to high five myself, can you turn around?"

"Maybe later," Lydia says, "In the meantime, come upstairs so I can show you just how much I appreciate your c—"

"Um, guys? Can you stop now?" They both turn to the side to see Liam standing there, looking a little grossed out.

"Liam," Stiles growls. " _Again_?"

"Scott says that Isaac finally contacted Argent. He knows what to do about the sirens, but we need Lydia."

" _I_ need Lydia."

She rolls her eyes. Puts her house key back in her purse.

"Raincheck?" she says, leaning up to peck Stiles quickly on the lips. He juts his lips out to meet hers, still glaring at Liam. "It was a lovely date, thank you for paying."

"I mean, I thought I was getting laid," he jokes, and she smacks him on the arm.

"Come on," says Lydia, heading back towards the jeep. "Let's get these sirens the _hell_ out of our town."

* * *

 

"Stiles!" Mrs. Martin's surprised voice hits him before the look on her face does— somehow, she always seems like she's not expecting him to turn up. Which is ridiculous, seeing as he's been following her daughter around like a lost puppy since sophomore year, but whatever. Stiles isn't all that picky when it comes to Martins, just as long as he gets his main one. "You're very early."

"Yeah, well." He shuffles back and forth a little uncomfortably, his hands in his pockets as he stares at his feet. "Your daughter told me that if I was late she would reach into my mouth, tug out my tonsils, and shove them up my… well, you know. And then, when I told her that I got my tonsils out when I was ten, she said that she would do the same thing to my tongue, which, in hindsight, probably would have been a good idea so that I didn't go around saying stupid stuff like this to her mother." He stops talking. They stare at each other.

"Anyways," says Mrs. Martin eventually, "Lydia's still getting ready upstairs."

"Mom!" yells a voice, and then the two of them turn towards the staircase to see Lydia emerging, wearing a pale pink dress that flows to the floor and a puzzled expression. "Have you seen my necklace for tonight? I specifically remember putting it on— _Stiles_!"

He's gaping up at her from the bottom of the staircase, his heart ricocheting across his chest like it knows that it isn't strong enough to beat through how beautiful she looks. Her hair hasn't been done yet, he can tell, but her makeup is finished and her dress is on.

"Hi," he manages to stutter out, suddenly very aware of how shaky his legs are. "You didn't put it on Stiles, though. I'm wearing a different necklace tonight."

Lydia's mouth opens to retort, and then she jumps behind the wall at the top of the staircase, hiding her dress from him.

"You're not supposed to see me!" she scolds.

"This is prom, not our wedding day. You're mixing up traditions."

"You're not supposed to see me because I don't _want_ you to see me," Lydia shoots back, clearly irked.

"Well, I think you look beautiful," offers Stiles from the bottom of the staircase. Lydia's smile barely stays on her face for a second before she's back scolding him.

"And you look like an incredibly handsome idiot who is _way_ too early."

"Ah, but I still am in possession of all my internal organs, so I'll _take_ it."

"Go amuse yourself," Lydia instructs, just as Kira's voice calls out that she found the necklace. "I'll be down in twenty minutes."

It's more like thirty, but then she's descending down the stairs towards him in the rose pink dress and her smile is brighter than the sparkling necklace that glitters against her skin. He remembers what she'd said about believing in the fairytale he had been telling all these years, and only now does it hit Stiles that he is truly a character in Lydia Martin's story. It slams into him at random moments— he's the prince in that fairytale. He's not her stupid best friend or her silly boyfriend. He's Lydia Martin's goddamn _love interest_.

He opens his mouth to tell her how gorgeous she is, but she covers his lips with hers and pulls back to tell him the exact same thing, running a hand through his hair, and that's when a goofy smile erupts on his face and just… doesn't leave.

Stiles looks like an idiot in all of the prom pictures that Natalie, his dad, Melissa, and the Yukimuras take. He looks like an idiot walking down promenade after Isaac and Malia, Lydia's arm tucked securely in his, the smug smile on her face telling him that she knows she's the most beautiful girl there. He's still beaming like a fucking lunatic when Lydia settles onto his lap in the photobooth and presses her mouth against his, letting the picture snap brightly, illuminating their silhouettes.

He pulls the photo strip out of the slot and realizes that it looks like they're _molded_ together, he and Lydia.

In fact, the only time he stops smiling is when they're all sitting around the table with the elegant white cloths and far less classy centerpieces, and Isaac Lahey decides to open his goddamn mouth and ask the question that Stiles is assuming has been on everyone's mind.

"So," he says, mouth filled with mashed potato. "Why haven't you two done it yet?"

Kira chokes on her sip of water. Malia thumps her on the back.

Stiles glances over at Lydia, trying to gauge her reaction, and is happy to see that both of them are the two most relaxed people at the table. Subtly, he reaches for her hand, and her dimples appear on her cheeks as she smiles.

"I keep forgetting to buy Viagra," deadpans Stiles. Scott snorts. "Whoa there, don't laugh, buddy. Erectile dysfunction is a very serious matter."

"We've been busy," Lydia says simply, squeezing his hand. "We have time, though."

"Right, okay," Isaac replies, nodding. Then: "You should do it tonight."

Well then. That's awfully forward considering that Isaac is neither party in this particular relationship.

"We're not having sex for the first time on _prom night_ ," says Lydia. "That's… ridiculously cliche."

"But aren't you two staying in a hotel room together?"

"Um," says Stiles. "Yeah?"

"And doesn't Lydia's mom think that she's sleeping over with Kira and Malia?"

"Yes," confirms Lydia.

"So… why don't you guys just have sex?"

"Malia!" says Scott, smacking his hands against the table. "You owe me a dance."

Lydia squeezes Stiles' hand one more time before standing up and gesturing for Isaac to follow her onto the dance floor, and they don't talk about it again for the rest of prom. It's a strange, giddy mix between dancing in pairs and dancing in a group, and this time the slow songs are different because he doesn't tuck his head low into Lydia's neck anymore. Instead, he talks to her the whole time, unable to stop listening to the way their voices and thoughts harmonize.

Her hair is falling out of its elegant updo by the time she goes to stand on the stage next to Scott, both of them in a state of shock as Finstock lowers two cheap crowns onto their heads. And as Stiles looks around at his classmates, he suddenly realizes that so many of them know far more than they're letting on— that the whispers in the hallway, all these years, had not been jibes. They had been fascination. Respect. On some level, maybe a very real one, they _know._

Scott twirls Lydia around and around and around and Stiles revels in the lightness of the circlets on their heads; the fact that there is no weight to them. For tonight, Scott's crown of thorns can't touch him.

Later that night, Stiles helps Lydia untangle her messy hair from the plastic crown and lets her sit between his legs as she brushes her hair out.

"You looked beautiful tonight," he finally gets to say while Lydia unzips her dress and lets it whoosh to the floor, leaving her in a matching bra and underwear set. He's sitting on the bed still, too lazy to get up and root around for his pajamas in the bag that Lydia had packed for the two of them. For the time being, Stiles watches as she wiggles into a plaid pair of pajama shorts and then sits down at the desk to carefully wipe off her makeup.

"How about now?' she asks, turning around to show him her bare face.

"You still look beautiful."

"Stand up," instructs Lydia, and Stiles gets off of the bed, watching as she approaches him in her pajama shorts and her bra. "Pants." He kicks them off quickly, throwing them across the room to crack her up. Lydia unbuttons his crisp white shirt, pushing it onto the floor so that he's left in his boxers and a white t-shirt. "You still look like my best friend," she murmurs.

He hugs her tight, holding her close, kissing the crown of her head as she rubs her nose up and down his chest.

Eventually, they part, winding up under the covers in their bed and searching through the movies that are on demand.

"That one came out while you were gone, right?" Lydia asks through a mouthful of gummy worms, and Stiles squints at the release date before nodding.

"Yep."

"It's got zombies in it."

"It's a rom com with zombies?"

"Absolutely."

"You went to see a rom com about zombies without _me_?"

"To be fair, Scott and I didn't know you existed."

"That's just rude, is what it is."

"Okay, so we'll watch it." Lydia laughs, swatting his hand away from the cookie dough bites that he knows very well that he is hogging. He catches her hand, tangling their fingers together, and only takes a few seconds to notice that Lydia is staring at their fingers instead of pressing the play button on the movie.

"Lyds?" he probes. "What's up?"

"I know it's cliche," she begins, and he groans, tilting his head back. "But I really want to have sex with you."

"Lydia, _no_. You were supposed to be the strong one here."

"Why _me_?"

"Because you're the pretty one."

"Sound logic," she says sarcastically.

"I thought so."

"But do we really hate ourselves so much that we wouldn't take advantage of a hotel room just because we don't want to be stereotypes?"

"We _are_ stereotypes. I'm the idiot in love, you're the hot girl genius with a heart of gold."

She throws him a helpless, disbelieving look.

"Okay. We can do this. We can not have sex."

"Exactly. We can."

She turns off the television, sitting up on her knees, folding her hands on top of each other on his shoulder before resting her chin on them.

"So. When we _do_ have sex, what position do you want to do it in?"

He can't help the way he cracks up.

"Ummm… have you heard of the snowmobile?" he asks teasingly.

"Oooh, we could do the honeytrap."

" _Wait_ what about the bone grinder?"

"I tried that once; it's a little awkward."

"Shit, there goes all my childhood dreams. Right out the window."

"Allison told me about this position that she and Scott tried once where—"

"Gaaah, Lydia, _no_!"

His hands shoot up to cover his ears, making her stop talking and raise her eyebrows at him.

"What?"

"That's my _brother_ you're talking about."

"You guys talk about sex all the time!" responds Lydia defensively.

"In a _contained_ manner."

"So you don't want to hear about the time he—?"

"Lala _lalalala_."

When Lydia pulls his hands off of his ears, he opens his eyes to see her beaming down at him, her eyes full of bare affection.

"How abouuut," she says musingly, rubbing her hands up and down his arms, "we just start off with plain missionary, and go from there?"

"'kay," he says easily. "Sounds good." Lydia stares at him expectantly, raising her eyebrows, and Stiles blinks. "Oh you mean _now_."

"I do."

"Do you have a—?"

"I do."

He knows she's answering a different question, can see it in her eyes, and that's what makes him finally decide, swallowing down any fear and hesitance he has had over the past month as he watches her watching him, her thumbs slowly stroking his cheeks. He smiles at her, soft, a little weak, not wanting to do anything but memorize the way she looks the first time. Her hair is falling over her right shoulder and her lips are still slightly stained from the lipstick she's been wearing all night.

"Look, this might be super weird to say right now, but I kinda think you're my soulmate?"

Stiles laughs nervously, and Lydia's lips quirk up in response.

"Well, _I,_ personally, have always thought we had this sort of connection? Unspoken, of course."

His mouth drops open as he stares at her in shock.

" _You heard that_?"

"I pretended to be on the phone to save you the humiliation."

"That's actually… kinda sweet."

"I'm a gem, what can I say?"

"Say you love me," he suggests hopefully, and Lydia crawls off of his lap, lying back against the pillows beside him, looking up at him with a soft smile on her face.

"I love you."

When he kisses her, all the separate moments in his life seem to come together until there is nothing but _sense_. He feels a rush of calm steal over him as he thinks about the girl lying underneath him, her hair soft as he runs his hand down her body, eventually ending up at her breast. He cups it, squeezing lightly, and the sigh she lets go of feels like a sunrise, like Christmas morning, like _new_ and incredible.

Her bra gets tossed to the side of the bed, her fingers weaving into his hair as he worshipfully licks and sucks at her breasts, wanting her as wet as possible for him— wanting this to be _good_. His lips trail down her stomach, to her ribs, to the small arrow tattoo etched into her side, to the mole right next to her left breast. He hums into her skin in the tune of "I love you," and he thinks she hears it from the way she arches into him.

Their noises are hushed as they touch each other, clothing falling to the floor, fingers and mouths combining to create something heady and overwhelming. Stiles thinks that maybe they're being extra quiet because it feels more intimate that way; closer. It's just the two of them, moving with the rustling of the sheets as Stiles finally rolls the condom onto himself and settles himself between Lydia's legs.

"Ready?" he breathes out, and she mashes her lips together before she nods at him, eyes trained on his face, trust implicit in her gaze.

He pushes into her slowly, well aware of how long it's been for her and that his fingers might not have been enough. His eyes are on hers as his brain short-circuits for just a moment, then registers the way her tight heat is wrapped around him, the way her fingers grip his arm, tightening briefly.

"Give me a second," she murmurs, and Stiles nods, kissing her forehead as he stays still inside of her, letting her breathe.

"Did you come?" he teases, lowering his voice and purposefully making himself sound like a dumb frat boy. Lydia tosses her head back and laughs before she leans up to tug his bottom lip between hers, just briefly, just long enough for his head to explode into fireworks. When she pulls back, he wipes away the tear at the corner of her eye with his thumb.

"No," she says, kissing his wrist. "No, I just want to remember. I just always want to remember how much I love you."

He slides almost all the way out of her before carefully pushing inside of her again, and thinks about the fact that this could be the last first he ever has.

* * *

"Why is it always raining in Beacon Hills?" asks Stiles, scrunching his nose grumpily as he stares towards one of the windows towards the end of the hall. Lydia, looking in the mirror of her locker as she adjusts her lipstick, takes in a breath to offer him a sassy answer, and Stiles offers her a look of warning. "That was _rhetorical_ , damn it."

She snaps her mouth shut, chastised, and returns to fixing her lipstick.

"I don't see why you're complaining. There's no lacrosse practice when it rains."

"Maybe that's why our team always sucked," Stiles muses. He's leaning against the locker next to Lydia's, ignoring the people a few lockers down who he is constantly in the way of. They're getting steadily more irritated as the month goes on, which he finds both amusing and unconcerning.

"You didn't suck," replies Lydia, finishing off her cupid's bow with a flourish.

"Uh, yeah we did."

She shuts the door to her locker with a satisfying bang, then turns to him and says stubbornly, "Of course you didn't. I don't date losers."

She looks so pretty, with her hair down and lightly curled around her face. He can see her bra strap, sticking out from the side her dress, and recognizes it to be one with a front clasp, which… yes please.

"Lydia," says Stiles. "I think you may have to face the fact that you bought your boyfriend a Star Wars waffle iron for his birthday. You're dating a loser."

Her eyes are dancing when they meet his, despite how small her smile is.

"That just means I'm dating a _nerd_ ," she corrects. "Trust me. I'm a genius."

"Yet somehow you fell into my clever trap," he jests, taking her hand and beginning to walk down the hallway.

"Oh yes, your trap," says Lydia sardonically. "How dare you treat me well and care about me deeply."

He chuckles, cheeks pinking up because that's how this girl _sees_ him— she sees him as the boy who would jump in front of a bullet for her, and she isn't wrong.

"Hey," he says, softly. "You have study hall, right?"

"Mhm," she confirms. "Why?" In response, he switches directions, walking through the double doors that lead to the parking lot. "Stiles?"

"Ready to run?" he asks in response, and Lydia gives him a surprised head shake before he has squeezed her hand tighter in his and is sprinting across the parking lot in the pouring rain. They book it to the jeep, hands still clutched together, Lydia's heels hitting hard against the pavement as she hoists herself into the car.

"What was that?" she pants, eyes bright as she turns towards him, disbelief in her expression.

"Wanna go somewhere?" he asks instead of answering her question. Her eyes flit down to his lips, then slide back up as she nods silently and buckles her seatbelt.

They end up pulled into the woods five minutes away from the high school, Lydia in Stiles' lap in the backseat, her underwear shoved to the side so that he can fit himself inside of her, gasping at the slow ache of her hands on his chest as she circles her hips around him. Her curls are limp now, water dripping onto his chest as she exhales and inhales with him, dropping down to kiss him every once in awhile.

He pulls her wet dress over her head, throwing it into the front seat, and splays his hands across her ribcage, counting the delicate bones that make up the body of the girl he loves. He watches the way her stomach clenches as she fucks herself onto him, her hands flying to the roof of the car when he brushes his knuckle against her clit.

"I," she pauses, swallowing, taking a breath, "Stiles I got off thinking about this _so_ many times. Fucking you in the back of this stupid car. I used to come so hard, thinking about it."

"God, me too," he moans, hips jutting up involuntarily. "Fuck, used to jerk myself thinking about how close you'd be to me. How I'd feel your moans vibrating through my body. How your breasts would feel against my chest."

"Like this?" she responds, lowering herself to him and letting her lips brush lightly against his as she continues to work herself over him. They don't kiss, instead breathing in each other's space, savoring this.

"Yeah," he groans, finally kissing her chin sloppily. "Just like that, Lydia. Just like that."

"You— you told me you loved me for the first time in this car."

"Fuck," moans Stiles, gripping her ass. "Yeah, yeah I did."

"And now," she says smugly, "I'm _fucking_ you in it."

He comes loudly about two seconds later, emptying himself inside of her as she pants into his neck, and he luckily manages to erase the snide look on her face by finger-fucking her until she gets off too, digging her nails into his shoulders and leaving little half-moons on his skin.

But his favorite part is after, cuddling in the backseat, her head on his bare chest, breaths blowing in and out in tandem as they talk about the number of hours between MIT and George Washington University. She falls asleep on his chest, and as he strokes her hair and kisses the crown of her head, he finally understands what it is like to be steady for someone. To be an anchor.

Stiles stays as still as he can while Lydia sleeps on him, and that in itself feels like a promise more than anything he's ever said to her.

* * *

Everybody in Beacon Hills knows that Lydia Martin throws the best parties.

It had started off with her bat mitzvah in seventh grade, and then it had never stopped. Come Monday morning, the school would be buzzing with talk of the weekend, including Lydia's incredible party at her opulent house. The stories were always crazy, but not too insane, which Stiles had always thought was purposeful. He remembers sitting at the lunch table with shorn hair and an annoyed expression, listening to people gossip about the evening in extreme detail. Most importantly, he can remember thinking that it was _just_ like Lydia Martin to control the amount of fun that the whole school was having, keeping it at a level she preferred. He had always known she was smart, but it's another whole thing, realizing the extent to which Lydia had her thumb on her high school experience.

She's always been astounding, which is why he doesn't exactly know why she's so nervous as she stomps through her house, barking at Mason and Liam to stack the cups in a less tumultuous way. When Lydia whirls around, presumably to holler at Scott about the string lights, Stiles catches her around the waist, quirking a grin when her limbs keep moving even though he's already caught her, as though she thinks she's going anywhere when he's got her feet hovering slightly above the ground.

" _What_?" Lydia asks, her words coming out in a furious hiss as she glares at Stiles. She's wearing a short ivory dress and heels to match and she looks like she's about to use her banshee powers to push him off of her if he doesn't speak in thirty seconds or less.

"I think you might need to consider doing that thing where you _breathe_ ," Stiles says delicately. "In and out, babe. In and out."

Her nostrils flare as he sets her back on the floor, and Stiles decides that he is definitely not going to stroke her perfectly curled hair because she seems to be even more agitated than she had been when she was waiting to give her valedictorian speech earlier today.

"Do you know when the last time my parents and sister were all in the same room was?" she snaps, eyes boring into his. Stiles thinks he might feel a burning sensation on his skin, as though she's shooting lasers into him.

"Christmas?" he suggests hopefully, even though he knows that her older sister hasn't been home since she left for college.

"Christmas," she confirms, "of eighth grade."

"Oh shit."

Yeah, so he hadn't exactly thought it would be _that_ long.

"Exactly."

He places his hands on her shoulders, bending his knees a little so he can look into her eyes.

"Lydia," he says, trying to keep his voice calm, "you're going to be great. I promise. I know you are. In fact, if either of us should be nervous, it's me."

"Why?"

"Uh, because I have to meet your _dad_?"

"You've met my father."

"We were six; it doesn't count."

She straightens up, chin jutting out as she stares at him stubbornly.

"Well, you shouldn't worry about making a good impression on him anyways."

His voice gets quiet.

"Lydia."

"I'm serious. His opinion of you doesn't matter to me."

"Oh, so you're not worrying about me becoming the badass forbidden boyfriend who your father hates?"

Lydia presses her lips together as she tries not to laugh.

"Didn't you know that you being my badass forbidden boyfriend is all part of your _allure_?"

"Uh-huh," he says, tugging her in for a quick, lazy kiss.

"Just don't say anything stupid," adds Lydia, pulling back and raising her eyebrows in warning, head turned slightly to the side as she looks up at him.

"Like what?"

"Like, um—"

"Like 'Oh hey Mr. Martin, I took your daughter from behind while she was adjusting her makeup a few hours ago?'"

Lydia snorts, her red lips vanishing behind her hand as she tries to disguise it.

"You _took me from behind_?"

"I thought I would give it some class."

She pats him condescendingly on the chest.

"Right. The 'class.' Don't do that."

"Gotcha."

"Good." Lydia nods, spinning around to go do something else.

"I loooove youuuu," he calls after her.

"Mmmm, _especially_ from behind," replies Lydia, turning around one last time to twiddle her fingers at him before she leaves.

Stiles meanders around with a glass held loosely in his hands, and he's the one who opens the door when the first group rings the bell. He does it a few more times, until one of Lydia's tipsy aunts gropes his ass while she's greeting him (following his introduction of himself as "the boyfriend,") and then Stiles decides that it would probably be safer to simply leave the door propped open.

Which is how he finds himself sitting on an iron bench in the backyard, perched next to Danny, as Derek gazes lovingly into Scott's eyes. Isaac's on Scott's other side, and Braeden is introducing Cora to Malia because she's never met her cousin, so there's literally nowhere for Stiles to go. He turns to Danny, jerking his chin awkwardly, and Danny just stares for a moment before getting off of the bench and going off to look for Ethan.

So. Still not attractive to gay guys, apparently.

"Hey," comes Scott's voice, and Stiles swings his head around to his best friend, surprised that he managed to shake himself from the lovefest. "Have you seen Lydia lately?"

Stiles shakes his head.

"Last I saw, she was talking to your mom?"

Scott sniffs the air noticeably.

"I've been trying to keep track of her emotional state all day, 'cause, you know," (he gestures around the party) "and I think—"

Stiles doesn't need Scott to finish the sentence, hauling ass off of the bench and heading in search of Lydia. He brushes past Deaton, who is chatting with Kira and her parents, and narrowly avoids another one of Lydia's aunts as he makes his way around the pool and through the dimly lit backyard, all the way through the house and out the front door.

When he finally finds Lydia, he isn't sure whether or not he should approach her, but one look at the tenseness of her back makes him lurch forward like he belongs there— and maybe he doesn't, but he belongs next to Lydia, and that's really all that matters.

Despite the height of her heels, she looks small as she stares at the grass under her feet. Her hands are folded together in front of herself, shoulders stiff, and she's completely still except for steady breaths that blow through her lungs. Stiles is at her side abruptly, not failing to notice the way her parents immediately stop talking when they notice him standing there.

He looks between the two of them, at Natalie's red rimmed eyes and Lydia's father's tense expression, the line of his mouth thin and flat.

"Hi," Stiles blurts out. "I'm Stiles Stilinski."

He stares at Lydia's dad awkwardly for a moment, then sticks out his hand rigidly.

"You're the boy who slept outside of her hospital room for an entire weekend."

Lydia's head snaps up in surprise.

"When?" she asks, eyes searching Stiles' face instead of her father's.

"Uh, the weekend that you got hurt on the lacrosse field?"

Her expression melts, her shoulders adjust into a more comfortable position, and her eyes are softer as she takes his hand.

"Oh," her dad says. "You're dating him?" Lydia nods. "What did you say your name was again?"

"Stiles Stilinski," he repeats. _And I have had unprotected sexual intercourse with your daughter. Twice._ "Nice to meet you again."

"Nice to meet you too," replies Mr. Martin, but he looks distracted, eyes flicking back to his ex-wife. Stiles watches Lydia watching them and wants desperately to make it all vanish, but he knows he can't. "Would you give us a moment, please?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," Stiles says amiably, then proceeds to not move from his spot next to Lydia.

The five of them stare at each other, and Stiles is beginning to think he's made a terrible mistake before Natalie throws her hands up into the air and storms into the house.

"Natalie!" hisses Mr. Martin, following her, and the door slams behind him as he leaves Stiles, Lydia, and Stefanie standing alone together in the front yard.

Lydia winces.

"I knew it," Stefanie mutters softly, shaking her head. She has hair that is the same color as her mother's, and the same body-type as well, Stiles thinks. Her lips are Lydia's, and he suspects her cheeks would dimple were she to smile, but right now she's staring gravely at her little sister. "I knew I shouldn't have come."

"It's my _graduation_ ," Lydia says, steely, stepping forward, leaving Stiles' side. "I was the valedictorian. No thanks to you, by the way."

"You didn't need my help."

Up close, Stiles can tell that she's older than them. Her eyes look tired— the type that comes with age, not like Lydia, who's tired eyes come from seeing so much shit and losing so many people.

"You wouldn't know that, would you? Because you don't know _me_ anymore."

Stefanie opens her mouth to answer, then closes it again when she remembers that Stiles is here.

"This is your boyfriend?"

And Lydia looks back at him, her expression a little lost. He tries to open himself up. Let her find herself in him.

"This is… he's the boy I'm in love with, yes."

The distinction resonates in Stefanie's eyes.

"You're right," she says. "You did grow up." The two of them watch each other, waiting, before Stefanie shakes her head. "I'm going to go say goodbye to grandma. Congratulations."

Stiles can hear the sound of the door swinging shut intermingling with the smooth music that Lydia had painstakingly selected, hoping to be able to appease everyone. He thinks she probably learned that from Scott. He thinks he should probably try to learn it from her.

Once again, he finds himself staring at her back as it moves up and down with her breaths, wondering how he is supposed to let this go when all he wants to do is destroy anyone and anything that makes her feel this way.

"I thought I could make this perfect," says Lydia quietly. "I wanted to… I wanted it to be."

"I know," murmurs Stiles, finally moving behind her so that he can embrace her. He props his chin on her head, and she places her hands on his arm, absently tracing her fingers up and down his skin. "I know."

"I'm _angry_."

"Me too."

He can feel her trembling slightly against his body, so he does the only thing he can do. He kisses the top of her head and thinks about how he's going to save her, just as he has time and again. Just like she's done for him. Just like they will do, for the rest of their lives. He's going to hold her when she's sad, he's going to defend her when she feels like she can't defend herself, he's going to be indignant on her behalf, he's going to celebrate with her, for her, _because_ of her.

_At some point I started believing in the same fairytale you did, just because the story was coming out of your mouth._

"You can see the stars tonight," says Stiles quietly. "All the constellations."

"I guess," she says, voice still small.

"Look, look— there's us when we were seven, right, and I got to be your partner during reading time." She laughs. It's still watery, which isn't good enough. "And there, right next to it, that's us as partners when we were seventeen, standing at my mystery board together."

She turns her head around to look up at him.

"And next to that?"

"I've got my head tucked into your neck at the school dance. And over there, we're holding hands even though we don't realize it— we used to do that a lot, did you ever notice?"

"I noticed," she replies tenderly.

"Over there you can see me against a wall with you against my chest— I think that one's moving, right?"

"You can see us breathing together," she agrees, and somehow her voice is shaking less even as she says it. She's not going to cry anymore. He can tell. "To the left of that, I'm on my knees kissing you on the locker room floor."

"And over there I'm kissing you back, a whole year later."

"And next to that?"

"There's us, right next to the little dipper, falling back asleep together after a nightmare. And there we are on our date, on a swing set at our elementary school. Us driving to prom together in the jeep. And there's us at a kitchen table that we picked out together, eating dinner that I made, and there's this dog named after a Star Wars character and you're laughing at something that I said that was probably stupid and I'm already thinking about how we're going to do it all again tomorrow, and the next day—"

"And the day after that."

She breathes out, shaky, staring out at the same sky he is; at the ghosts of them that are etched into the universe; at the stars that are theirs and theirs alone.

"See it?" Stiles asks, voice breaking at the vulnerability of it all.

And Lydia just nods, hands gripping his arms a little tighter.

"Yes," she murmurs. "I can see it."

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. Welp. Now you've read this and I have plenty to be ashamed of, but before you ream me out for being too dirty, let's thank some people. 
> 
> To my beta readers:
> 
> Maggie, you know I love you, I don't even have to say it, you know. But thank you for going at my run on sentences. They deserved to be taken down like the bitches they are.
> 
> Ashley, you're my best friend and the love of my life and thank you for reading my fics even though the smut terrifies you. What a queen.
> 
> Rachel (madgrad2011), Thank you so much for glancing over my fic, your approval literally means everything to me. It truly does. You understand Lydia so beautifully and perfectly, you just _get_ her, even though she's so complex, and I'm in awe of anyone's ability to get her character because I often lie awake at night stressing out about how I will never understand her layers. Gah, I love you, lady. You're the best of the best in the Stydia fandom. 
> 
> Sophii, your sass, humor, intelligence, and understanding of characters never fails to astound me. I just love the hell out of you, I don't know what my everyday life would be without you, but I'm glad that I have no idea.
> 
> I also need to thank the people who helped me put together this big bang, because without you, I would have lost it. You guys were everything to me these past few weeks.
> 
> Kay: You put up with all my crazy ideas and sent emails when I literally couldn't do it anymore. Thank you.
> 
> Rachel: You kept me on track when I was distracted by school and writing, you helped with the mythology on this fic, you gave me incredible ideas. You make me smile every day and are the smartest person I know. I couldn't possibly admire you more.
> 
> Lauren: ...You deadass are the most wonderful and helpful person of all time, what the fuck would I do without you working on stydiacast and this big bang with me? I don't know how you manage to do everything you do PLUS be such a lovely person and be so fantastic at your job, but here we are and you are superior to all.
> 
> Claire: I know you hate everything and pretend to be dead inside, so I shall fill you with love and hugs so that you know you're the best. You were a real help this week, thank you for everything you did.
> 
> Leeann: Hello, human sunshine. Thank you for all the hard work you did. People would not have their title cards without you, and I most certainly would not have my sanity. You are just... liquid sunshine, bottled joy. Thank you so much for everything, every day.
> 
> Catherine: GIRL HOW DO YOU CODE, seriously, how do you do what you do? You are one of the smartest people of all time, your school destroys you and you still go online at night and have time to give so much to this fandom and be so sweet and helpful. Idk how you do it but I'm pretty sure you're superwoman, so there's that.
> 
> I hope you take the time to read some of the other big bang fics as well and check out the amazing art! Have a wonderful day <3
> 
> PS: I am writergirl8 on twitter and rongasm on tumblr.


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